User Reviews

The film's core idea is smart enough, but the application runs into several problems. The first iteration of the thought experiment is promising, and the idea of multiple tries is good. You know, if you forget small things like that the rigged cards are obvious to everyone but the very clever students about an hour before someone suspects something. But on the second part, things turn sour. Things happen in the bunker that simply can not be justified: who decides the gay characters have sex only to be seen by Petra, and then actually argue about it? (!) How does one of them (and then again in the third part) hide in a room? It's absurdly arbitrary. On the third version, we get a supposedly top student make really, really poor decisions based on some kind of naive Christian-hippie attitude to life. Granted, she is doing it to annoy the teacher, but it doesn't help that people are falling for tricks such as "come really close to get the keys so I can pull you in - oh man, I can't believe that worked!" or "I stole your gun by pretending to care!". Internal lack of coherence such as "I remember the code I might have seen you type in an imaginary past life" is also a sign of poor problem solving by the screenwriters. Who seem to realise that their characters started taking things too seriously and try to release some comedic relief and more backstory in the end. The first fails, because it's neither very good, nor very well balanced, it feels more like a sudden change of direction. The latter kind of helps in establishing that we don't have a vengeful genius (=evil) teacher who likes to torment his students. All in all: it could have (perhaps) been better if it was a fully serious film but with more careful scripting, or if it was far less serious. As it is, it's simply decent.

PS. If these students don't understand that Mr Zimit is right about pretty much everything, they may need to repeat the class.

PS2: Babbling on a bit, but I have to say, in the first attempt at this experiment, if I was among the outvoted, I'd use the "5 minutes to be alone before everyone enters the bunker" to tell the rest of my group to run inside and shut everyone out.

Its actually true when they say, if you don't understand it you probably wont like it. Maybe this could spoil a little bit the movie, but it's necessary to allow everyone to understand the movie, making them aware they failed the thought experiment! My assessment for the movie is actually positive. It's not exempt of flawless. Maybe the narration is too focused on some sex scenes and even visually ones which could be effectively removed without changing the story and keeping focused the audience. Even the questions raised during the lecture where debated too briefly just because to give to even the most ignorance spectator the tools to solve the riddle! Moving beyond this flawless and reviewing the story you can easily understand at half the movie that the thought exertion is not only requested to students but even to you. The envision of the apocalypse was not less than their life! The big question which is at the basis of the movie is: WHO WILL YOU TAKE WITH YOU DURING YOUR LIFE? Will you surround yourself with smart people, intelligent, maybe scientists just to purse higher objectives and catch all possible opportunities but keeping emotions, amusement and recreational experiences out of your life or will you live your life like a human being? Not only making it dominated by logic but even emotions and precisely philosophy! The thought experiment at the beginning is carried only in one direction but soon, the smartest among them! Realize that there is something more! something that the professor is trying to force them to leave. The final is simply the realization of the importance of what you will put in your life, your loves or just your work accomplishments... Now watch again the movie and keep in mind all those things, you will start to debate even on your own life, not only what choices are made by the students in the movie...

Let me start by saying that I loved the concept of this movie, and the way in which they tried to bring this classic thought experiment to life. However, from both a philosophical and filmmaking perspective, the execution of this story was hugely problematic.

I am writing this review as someone who has been a passionate reader, student and teacher of philosophy for many years - and as someone who still regularly uses this very thought experiment as an educational tool.

1. At one pivotal point in the movie we are told that philosophy is not morality.

Not only is much of philosophy dedicated to questions of morality, but this entire film is built on a thought experiment that was created to endorse a particular moral philosophy - that of utilitarianism (consequentialism in particular). Such a basic and fundamental error of fact is absolutely unforgivable in a movie that is supposed to be all about philosophy.

2. The final iteration of the thought experiment is meant to show us that utilitarianism is a flawed moral philosophy, and that there are other ways of responding to the scenario it has set up.

However, our main protagonist is still using the moral philosophy of utilitarianism when she executes her new, and supposedly non utilitarian solution to the crisis - the only difference between what she does in the final round, and what the group did in the previous two rounds, is that she makes judgments about the worth of people and chooses them based on traits she deems to be of value rather than the trials that the class formerly deemed to be of value.

The key point though, is that she has still judged people's value based merely on the attributes they posses.

3. The group suicide at the end of the third solution to the thought experiment is not only more like homicide (in that she is the one who decides that everyone else will die), but it is also, once again, utilitarian in nature.

She has deemed that their life no longer has value based solely on the fact that they do not posses the necessary functions for rebuilding their brave new world (which is, ironically, exactly what the teacher was trying to get them to do the first two times, and exactly what she was supposedly avoiding with her third and final solution to the problem).

From a filmmaking perspective; the suicide bomb was also a very weird and contrived way to achieve that plot point - it was an event that completely violated the very rules which the film had created for itself up until that point.

It's one thing to completely change the parameters of the thought experiment as you go (to suit the plot development), it's another thing altogether to start conjuring up fantasy outcomes - an action which was not previously allowed/possible.

If she can conjure up a bomb for convenience, then why wouldn't she conjure up a life- saving text book, or a washed up (and functional) escape vessel instead?!

4. The 'thought experiment inside the thought experiment' that we had presented to us in the third and final round was:

a) completely out of tone with the entire rest of the film (it suddenly goes from dramatic thriller to an American Pie style slapstick comedy).

AND:

b) not actually a thought experiment at all - instead it was merely a sexual fantasy (thought experiments involve scenarios that are meant to be philosophically pondered and possibly solved - but what we saw was neither).

5. The remembering of the code in the third and final round of the thought experiment, by spying on the teacher at the end of the second round, was a complete violation of the laws of the universe the film had created (as well as a violation of how thought experiments work).

Even if you change or add to the parameters of a thought experiment in subsequent variations of it, what you are effectively doing with this action is creating a brand new thought experiment to be pondered and debated.

It's effectively a reset, where everything goes back to the beginning, except this time some of the fundamental parameters have changed so that different logical arguments are brought into play.

But having a character do something like steal a code from a previous discussion of the thought experiment, and then use it in a brand new discussion of a band new version, is nonsense at both a philosophy and filmmaking level - if she has the code, why is she also suddenly alive again when, at the end of the previous thought experiment she was killed in the process of acquiring the code.

6. The ending of the movie is terrible, and it really deflates what has been a solid effort at filmmaking up until that point.

a. We, the audience, despite not having been given any reason to do so, are suddenly expected to care about a creepy (and almost certainly illegal) affair that the teacher is having with a much younger student.

b. The nature of the character of the lead female suddenly undergoes a totally inexplicable 180 degree change, for no good reason, just so that a contrived ending can be executed

c. She ends by stating: "you are a very good teacher Eric", despite the fact that he is sleeping with students, has just been caught trying to publicly humiliate a male student he is jealous of, and has just finished threatening to strip her of the A+ grade she has earned simply because she refuses to join him in humiliating the male student he is jealous of. (And that's not even discussing the fact that he gave a female student he was sleeping with an A+ grade in the first place!)

I have never given a movie such a high score before; before you think I'm crazy, let me defend myself. I completely disagree with almost all the other reviews of the film here, good and bad. The issue is that many of the viewers have been focusing on the foreground that they miss the bigger message which steadily builds in the background.

This movie is not about the literal philosophical problem of who to take in a bunker, it is about power structures and authority. The philosophical dilemma in this movie is more about Plato's Cave, to which it even gives a small shout-out. Ironically, the other reviewers who thought this was about an apocalypse are those watching shapes on the wall while the real 'philosophers' turned around and looked at the man casting the shadows. And he was indeed no philosopher king. Nope, he was just an isolated expat attempting to control his rather human and difficult situation.

It is very rarely that a movie is so deep it actually fools almost all of its viewers. Which is why I think it has something for everyone. Even if you are only capable of watching shapes on the walls, at least they are entertaining shapes at that.

There are some discrepancies about the title of this film. Some sources are calling it 'After the Dark' which sounds bit like a horror movie, which is totally not, or the title that is on IMDb, 'The Philosophers' which in my opinion is more fitting. This film has an interesting concept. The action of the movie takes place in few locations at the same time. The main plot of the movie happens at an international school in Jakarta, were a philosophy teacher (James D'Arcy) challenges his class of twenty graduating seniors to choose which ten of them would take shelter underground and reboot the human race in the event of a nuclear apocalypse. Sounds strange and maybe boring, but it is anything but. In fact as the audience we wonder were this film will go. There are lots of moral questions ask here, about who is worth to be chosen to rebuild the humanity in case of a nuclear attack. It is all about the skills you possess and an ability to procreate. Is opera singer redundant over, for example carpenter? Do people who have to spend the full year in seclusion eventually will want to have some form of entertainment to drift away from the depression and monotony of their lives? Should gay people be automatically excluded not wanting to mate with women? These are interesting philosophical questions. The 3 hypothetical scenarios of the apocalypse are as follows, one bunker existing in Jakarta, one on the desert and the last one on deserted beach, offers a different psychological versions of behavior when intelligent young people who in fact are sitting in a classroom need to make a life and death decisions. This film has a lot of psychological depth and stays away from the typical apocalyptic clichés giving an interesting intellectual alternative approach to storyline that could easily become tedious. The performances are quite strong specially from James D'Arcy, Rhys Wakefield and almost hypnotic Sophie Lowe as Petra the smartest pupil of the class. The special FX of the nuclear explosions are good but not in pair with other movies with the higher budgets, but not distracting enough to take the attention of the viewer away from the overall experience. The music of Jonathan Davis and Nicholas O'Toole is a big part of the overall experience.'After the Dark' or 'The Philosophers' however this movie is called, might be worth checking out in the cinema due to it's visual appeal, nicely shot by John Radel, but also can be DVD rental on a rainy evening.

For more of my reviews please go to: www.facebook.com/JanuszMadejTechnique

The concept and the basic idea of the film was good, but it is quickly and unmercifully ruined by logical fallacies, bias and personal disposition. A film about students at the last day of philosophy and logic class, voting in a politician in the bunker because "she can make decisions". This coming from a film that advertises the students with the tags "smart" and "talented". At WHAT exactly? Because surely not at making decisions.

The film scarifies an extreme amount of sanity and rationality, just to try and get across the script writer's beyond awesome conclusion. Amongst the many: - Not being able to figure out a 5 digit password in 364 days. Even though the film begins with the example of a monkey reciting the Hamlet's complete works, given enough time. - Voting on who dies, because drawing straws (Which wouldn't make anyone a murderer) is too obvious. - Not being able to decide whether they are the only people left alive on earth or just one group amongst many, hiding in bunkers - Teacher shooting people at random to antagonize himself, then explains his presence as "wild-card" meaning he could be just as easily a sociopath as god himself, then wonders why he is left to die... - Ending up at the final "**** it all conclusion" which is completely fine with everyone as it turns out, but i guess you had to go through the whole "lets quickly decree 10 people to death so we could enjoy 364 days of holiday before the end of our lives".

Its just extreme. Watching the film left me with agonizing pain, mental scars and the realization that "philosophers" as the title, as well as every hint at school and logic were meant as irony, since you will find only its absence in the film.

It starts off with a fairly interesting premise, some philosophy students debating moral issues at the end of the world. But it quickly falls down when it succumbs to pathetic teenage morals and self-righteousness. But I think it's the misrepresentation of philosophy that make it so infuriating. The idea that at the end of the course the so-called top student still isn't able to disengage her own moral code long enough to join in the thought experiment. What have they been doing all year, if this is the first time that her sense of moral right and wrong is being challenged? Also, philosophy is the exploration of ideas and thoughts. So, what kind of philosophy teacher starts marking down his students because they show thoughts and opinions that differ from his own? He should be encouraging independent thought. Then, in the final act the right shows his true disregard for philosophy when logic is utterly shut down by emotional arguments. I assume this is just to make an appeal to the over emotional teens this movie is aimed at. Serves me right for watching this rubbish, I suppose.

Yes, that line is really in this movie. IT'S LOGIC! More spoilers on the way: Another thing to learn from the film: Everybody really likes Arwen Evenstar (who is called Petra in this film) because she is really smart and has the mimic spectrum of a cow and is the only blonde woman. And by the way: If you have to decide which people to take with you into a bunker for one year - don't leave out the psychopath who suddenly commits mass murder and explains that by saying: "Well, they wanted me to do it. So I just shot them all. No problemo!" Because in a realistic scenario like this, he could very well be the bunker builder of all bunkers ever who builds them in a way so nobody else can ever leave them without him. What a great and mysterious bunker builder he is. IT'S LOGIC!

If you ever happen to be in a class, where you are to perform a theoretical survival game and the teacher himself ensures that every attempt to survive fails by constantly killing people or trying to rape them... Well, then you might happen to be at the film set of "Return of the Philosophers" or "G.I. PHILOSOPHY" or "The philosophy teacher who still wants to make philosophical sex to his best student so badly". And in that case you better leave the room. Otherwise you will inevitably be in the second worst movie ever made.

Now for some serious criticism: "The fact that I am gay doesn't mean I don't love you, Arwen Evenstar (Petra)! It just means I am never gonna have sex with you ever. And you shouldn't have sex with anyone else ever. And me being gay also means that I think I should not reproduce myself." Now that is from the movie. Gay people should not reproduce themselves. Clearly that is not messed up thinking in many ways, no. The movie calls it "Evolution by refusal to reproduce." IT'S LOGIC!

Did I mention the fact that they are able to get rid of the teacher in the third round of the experiment because they still know the door code from the first experiment? IT'S LOGIC! So you want more? There is more: People enter a bunker because of atomic apocalypse - apocalypse NOT taking place - teacher is hiding from radiation in a very deeeeeep cave and also survives. IT'S LOGIC! Guy gets killed by radiation and then gets eaten by a dog. ATOMIC APOCALYPSE SURVIVAL DOG IN THE HOUSE! So the people have to decide who may get into the bunker and who not. Suddenly someone has the keys to a funny little boat that will take people to an island without any radiation. You know, the no-atomic-apocalypse-island. IT'S LOGIC! Or the girl that gets voted out of the bunker because she will have cancer... in about 3 years. IT'S LOGIC!

Okay, now seriously. The film is full of philosophy so it is good for people with huge brains. Philosophy is the science of little riddles. Plato for example was a great riddle-maker, just like Wittgenstein or Superman or Nacho Libre. These people had huge brains. They had such huge brains that even their heads were extremely big.

"I know the world is ending and also 11 of us are going to die but I kinda have to ask you this question: Should I take these turtles with me into the bunker? I just found them at the river and they are sooo cute!"

Actually the whole film is a metaphor! It is about mentality and the way we look at life! And about loooooove! And about generations! And about lived philosophy! And about how everything is not always about logic! And to make that more clear they chose a bad script, crappy actors and let the guy who wrote the nonsense also be the director - all just so that he can get his message across! Plus there were some explosions, temples, beaches and bikinis, too. And a gay love scene which the actors obviously could not really perform for some reason so they just made it look as if they kissed each other. In the mysterious bunker-love-bed (which they have because after building a fitness room, a lounge, a light-therapy-room and several driving ranges inside the bunker, there simply was no more space for separate sleeping rooms, so they all sleep in the same room and share one huge love-bed for reproducing and stuff). Don't miss it! IT'S LOGIC!

0/10 Stars. Stars?

This movie was really really promising, and finally turned out to be just okay. The whole philosophical idea could have been exploited better, but in a way it really worked and it was nice to see what the next move could change to whatever they are going through. I admit that the...ending of each experiment is kinda easy, even though that leads them to "understand" how to "win" ( the overuse of "" should be a sign everything is only imaginative and kinda boring though ) this thing. The worst thing about this film is the last 10 minutes. SPOILER How weak it is for a screenwriter to make everything hold on a simple jealousy battle. Awful. The teacher loses whole its depth and it's a shame. As for the ending(s), that is one of the worst choice I've ever seen in any movie.

The cast was good, despite the fact that 75% of the young actors are only here for figuration.

I realize I mostly say negative thing here, but that's how I liked it.

Looking forward something new from the director, hoping he will get better.

I actually liked this movie a lot and I liked the characters involved. I wish there was more character development involved but it was still quite interesting to see. I also enjoyed the ending of the movie although I was kinda weirded out with the relationship between the teacher and one of the students and I thought that plot line was kinda unecessary.

i had seen the trailer for this film and said to myself, 'meh maybe'. Then i downloaded the rental and within the first half hour i realized things had gone awry and were only going to get worse.

the top three things terribly wrong with this nonsensical tripe, which landed in some production office on the desk of an uncreative moron who said to themselves 'my god this will be brilliant!', are as follows.

1. These characters are one dimensional on a good day. Also as you sit through it you're not relating to them as characters but are forced to try and relate to some god awful fictional idea of a character picked out of a box for a philosophical discussion of who to save in an end of the world type event. Do you see what I am getting at? "no?" OK. They are already characters in a fictional film, that have NOT been developed so you don't care about them right off the back. However they pick professions, out of box to help them with this last day of philosophy class scenario and then we develop a story around that. If I didn't care about them before WHY would I care about these livelihoods that they are making up in a classroom. I am running out of characters so it is just poor character development and story.

2. THERE IS NOTHING AT STAKE! Watch the movie, and tell me if these students, who you have formed no real relation with (when i say relation i mean a viewer's relation to what's being watched. a good writer captivates and intrigues with his dynamic characters and dialog....key term"a good writer"), the students have nothing to lose by walking out of the class on the last day of school. They have already been accepted to a college, (as anyone who attended a high school would know at this point in a school year) they are all passing (according to professor asshole), so leaving a discussion that is 'leaving a bad image of the class' in your mind wouldn't hurt you. Despite the teacher's vain efforts to make you think otherwise.

3. Petra is the A+ in this class, then the bar for academic achievement in a philosophy class is LOW. Her attempt to make the third scenario work is RIDICULOUS....I found myself yelling at the screen because i had already sat through 3/4 of the film and thought it would redeem itself. IT DIDN'T.

Overall i have seen a lot of crap in my lifetime. Yet nothing made me seek out the IMDb page to leave a scathing review. On a positive note they are an attractive cast. I like a lot of these actors it is not really their fault but the fault of the writer who thought his/her experience in a philosophy class would be worth the time to watch. I would've rather pushed a school bus of kittens and infants off a cliff AT GUN POINT then have to sit through this slop ever again.

Also DANIEL ANDREWS, who gave 10/10, you and this film make me hate PHILOSOPHY!

A teacher gives his philosophy class a thought experiment to tinker with. The apocalypse is imminent and a bunker near by but only with room for 10 out of 22. So he assigns an occupation (like engineer, chemist, poet, etc) to each of the students and they have to decide who lives or dies. This scenario they run thru 2 different times with various twists before the apparent over-achiever among the over-achievers in the class takes over and turns the tables which leads to a rather surprising ending that changes the synopsis of the movie in its entirety. In short you could say it's a thought experiment within a thought experiment.

Overall the movie was great but falls short in a few minor things - so an 8/10.

The best part of the movie is probably also it's biggest weakness and why it got such a low rating (5.7). The ending is a bit too ambiguous which makes it easy to miss the point of the whole thing and it just flies above your head. Even though it uses the principle of Chekhov's gun for all the elements it would have been better to spend a little more time to explore the motivation of the 2 main characters in order to provide the necessary contrast of what the actual Gedankenexperiment was. Or simply change the dynamic of the conclusion so they have to speak a bit louder instead of mumbling. Also the narrative arc from what the teacher describes as life at the beginning and the world he lives in after the last day of school is kind of lost.

Definitely worth watching, but make sure you focus on the details and what happens in the classroom otherwise the whole experience might be ruined.

**Contains Spoilers**

This movie does not come full circle. It does not explain concepts. So do not watch it for those reasons. Fortunately, I read a simple review before that stated this: watch the movie with an open mind.

When do philosophers come full circle anyway? I mean when I think about Kant with his 'ding an sich' I do not see logic either, I see a practical assumption being made, but in my opinion it's strictly not logical. Or take Descartes with his rationalism. That's illogical right there.

But in my opinion (just as I expressed it in previous paragraph) that is not the point of Philosophy. philosophy explores, more than any other academic endeavour. In a sense philosophy is the study of definitions and the consequences on the widest topics ever, but it is also interesting to see when it is applied in the wrong way.

The point that was being made is that: (1) do not trust a psychopath, (2) you can just have fun, but then you'll die, (3) logic is not everything (same goes for emotions), (4) how a philosophy teacher would want to do a power play, (5) how people in a thought experiment would behave differently than a real one. And more of those things.

It was beautiful to explore.

My solution in the first iteration: at least close the bunker, do not make the decision outside. Make the decisioninside, then you have a bit more time to think.

I'm not a philosopher by the way, I study psychology :)