A middle class couple leave NYC with their two teenage kids to stay in a luxurious Long Island beach house for a weekend getaway. Phone, TV and internet stop functioning shortly after their arrival, and when the family try to relax by the ocean a huge oil tanker inexplicably runs itself aground on the beach. Late that night the home's affluent African-American owner and his college-age daughter arrive seeking refuge from societal disintegration in Manhattan, and a prickly introduction follows before the ill-matched group falls asleep uneasily under the same roof.
Morning brings a truce, but no illumination about the nature of the crisis. The vacationers stay on as numerous disturbing incidents demonstrate all is not well with the world - airliners crash out of clear blue skies, wrecked cars block the highways, animals behave strangely, loud noises blare and the teenage son falls ill. Theories are proposed that the mayhem might be caused by hostile foreigners or native extremists, but nothing is certain, and the story never develops much of an arc.
The cast manages to keep the project afloat until all the bizarre happenings start undermining credulity. The various disasters have little rationality behind them, and the absence of other human beings within sight of the city seems implausible. Once belief has been lost, the movie shows how a suspenseful mystery about world-changing events can turn into a bit of a bore. As the film sputters out of existence, it feels like it might have been conceived as a pilot for a TV series. The deeply unsatisfying conclusion leaves the impression that the writers were as clueless as their characters about the catastrophe which they'd invented.
Morning brings a truce, but no illumination about the nature of the crisis. The vacationers stay on as numerous disturbing incidents demonstrate all is not well with the world - airliners crash out of clear blue skies, wrecked cars block the highways, animals behave strangely, loud noises blare and the teenage son falls ill. Theories are proposed that the mayhem might be caused by hostile foreigners or native extremists, but nothing is certain, and the story never develops much of an arc.
The cast manages to keep the project afloat until all the bizarre happenings start undermining credulity. The various disasters have little rationality behind them, and the absence of other human beings within sight of the city seems implausible. Once belief has been lost, the movie shows how a suspenseful mystery about world-changing events can turn into a bit of a bore. As the film sputters out of existence, it feels like it might have been conceived as a pilot for a TV series. The deeply unsatisfying conclusion leaves the impression that the writers were as clueless as their characters about the catastrophe which they'd invented.