Film

Before We Die

Name: Before We Die
Cast: Lizzy Walther, Audrey Lane

Other titles called Before We Die: the 2021 series (Channel 4).

A sixteen-minute film about two young survivors sheltering on a Manhattan rooftop after a devastating virus. They're making a list of things to do before they die, turning existential dread into connection. It's intimate, contemplative, and quietly urgent—a short that asks what we actually want when everything else falls away.

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But Tonal whiplash between comedy and melancholy can feel uneven. Some find the central romance underdeveloped despite strong chemistry.

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The Last of Us2023

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All Is Lost2013

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The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

Arrival2016

Both use the end of the world (or time itself) to ask what we'd actually choose. Not survival plans—what actually matters when choice is stripped bare.

Amy Adams learns an alien language and discovers it rewires how you perceive time itself. It's sci-fi that's really about choice and sacrifice—how knowledge changes whether you'd live the same life again.

But Slow-burn intellectual puzzle that some find more cerebral than emotional. The twist reframes everything, which ruins it if you're not ready to think backwards.

The Road2009

Viggo Mortensen and a young boy traverse an ash-covered America after cataclysm. It's about love as the only thing worth surviving for, shot in grey and gold, devastating and strangely beautiful.

But Crushingly grim throughout. The cinematography is beautiful but the world depicted is relentlessly hopeless—catharsis doesn't come easy.

The Midnight Sky2020

An old astronomer alone on a space station watches humanity end below. It's a meditation on isolation, regret, and whether connection survives the death of the world. Ambitious and sincere.

But Narrative structure is fractured and sometimes confusing. The parallel storyline dilutes the power of the central isolation premise.

Station Eleven2021

After a flu pandemic, survivors rebuild meaning through art and storytelling. Each episode jumps in time and perspective. It's about what survives us and why beauty matters when everything else is gone.

But Ten episodes and very dense—not fast television. Some find the jumping timeline structure more confusing than elegant.

99 Homes2015

Andrew Garfield fights to keep his family's house during the 2008 financial collapse. It's about desperation and moral compromise, watching someone unravel when the ground shifts beneath them.

But Claustrophobic and infuriating by design. If watching good people trapped by circumstance stresses you out, this film will not comfort you.

Yellowjackets2021

Plane crash survivors in the wilderness—but also their trauma decades later. It braids past and present into a mystery about what they became and what the wilderness did to them.

But Frequently brutal and chaotic. The show loves withholding answers; if you need resolution, you'll spend seasons frustrated.

Take Shelter2011

Michael Shannon builds a bunker because he's convinced a catastrophe is coming. It's about the gap between belief and reality, certainty and paranoia, and the people who love someone they don't understand.

But Deliberately ambiguous about whether the threat is real or imagined. Some viewers find the ending unsatisfying rather than haunting.

Synecdoche, New York2008

Both strip away everything and ask: with nothing left to hide behind, what do you actually want to create or build? The roof and the warehouse are the same desperate stage.

Philip Seymour Hoffman, a theater director, builds a life-sized replica of New York inside a warehouse while his real life collapses. Charlie Kaufman's masterpiece about art, mortality, and the blur between living and performing.

But Deliberately confusing and recursive—the film enacts its own themes about reality fracturing. Many find it pretentious or exhausting rather than profound.

Stalker1979

Like the rooftop, it's about two people in an enclosed space confronting what they actually want when the normal world can't distract them—except Tarkovsky makes the wanting itself the entire subject.

Tarkovsky's hypnotic Soviet science-fiction follows a guide leading two men through a mysterious zone toward a room that grants wishes. Shot in long, meditative takes, it's about desire and whether knowing what you want is the same as knowing what you need.

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