2:14 AM. My hands are shaking a little. Just finished The Decline on Netflix and I feel like I just ran a marathon through the woods. A very, very dangerous, snowy, Quebecois woods. My heart is doing this weird fluttery thing and I keep glancing over at my front door, making sure it's locked. Not that it would help against... well, you know.
It starts so innocently, right? This guy, Antoine, he's a bit of a nerd. A normal dude. Wants to learn survival skills to protect his family. That's noble, right? I get it. I mean, I have a first-aid kit in my car that's probably expired, but the intention is there. So he signs up for this training camp in the middle of nowhere. Big mistake, Antoine. Huge mistake.
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The camp leader, Alain, is this charismatic, intense guy who seems to have it all figured out. He's got the compound, the loyal followers, the whole "we're the only ones who will survive the coming collapse" vibe. And for a while, you're kind of on board. He makes some good points about self-sufficiency. But then... the cracks start to show. The rigidity. The weird drills. The way he looks at people who question him. That's when my stomach started to knot up. I was curled up on my couch, hugging a pillow, and I just knew. This was not going to end well.
And then it happens. The accident. The fall. I literally lurched forward on my couch. My cat, who was sleeping peacefully on the other end, shot me a look of pure betrayal. Sorry, Mittens. It was just so sudden. So brutal. One minute they're doing this training exercise, high up on this rickety wooden tower, and the next... chaos. Pure, unadulterated chaos.
That shot. The one from the bottom looking up as the tower starts to sway. The metal groaning, the snow starting to fall like confetti at a terrible party. It wasn't loud, not at first. It was this horrible, deep, guttural scream of stressed steel. That's what's going to haunt me. Not the blood, not the yelling, but that sound. And the silence right after. The Netflix interface seemed to hold its breath with me. I just sat there, remote in hand, mouth open, for a solid ten seconds before the movie cut back to the aftermath.
The whole prepper thing... it reminds me of when my uncle decided we needed to be 'ready for anything' after watching some doomsday documentary. He bought this ridiculously expensive 'survival' backpack. We opened it once. It had a fishing hook, a flint that didn't work, and about 500 water purification tablets. We were living in a suburb of Chicago. Where exactly were we planning to fish? Lake Michigan? I think he still has it in his garage, gathering dust next to his lawnmower... he'd probably have lasted five minutes at Alain's camp.
And Antoine's shift. I was with him at the start. He's just a guy trying to learn, to be prepared. But then... the snap. It felt so fast. After the fall, he just... changes. I thought it was powerful in the moment, a descent into primal survival mode. But now that I'm typing this, thinking about it in the quiet of my living room... was it a bit too easy? Did the movie just need him to go from zero to a hundred to get to the good stuff? I don't know. Maybe that's the point. Maybe we're all just one bad fall away from...
So then it becomes a hunt. Through the woods. In the snow. At night. The tension is just... unbearable. It's not a big, flashy action movie. It's gritty and messy and desperate. The sound design is incredible. Every snap of a twig, every gasp for breath, every crunch of snow... I had the volume up and it felt like they were right outside my window. I had to pause it twice. Once when my ice maker dropped a new batch of ice and the sound made me jump out of my skin. And once just to get a glass of water. My throat was so dry. Netflix's 'Are you still watching?' didn't even pop up, which I'm grateful for. I think I was leaning so far forward the TV thought I was actively engaged. Which I was. Terrifiedly engaged.
There's this one scene where Antoine is hiding under some branches, and one of Alain's guys is so close he could probably hear his heartbeat. I was literally holding my breath. My lungs were burning. I had to consciously tell myself to breathe. That's good filmmaking. When it can physically mess with you like that.
Honestly, the ending left me feeling... hollow. Not in a bad way. Just... empty. It's not a happy ending. It's not a triumphant ending. It's just... an ending. The only one that could have happened, I guess. There are no heroes here. Just survivors. And people who don't survive. That's it. That's the whole movie. It's a stripped-down, brutal look at what happens when the "what if" becomes "what now."
I don't think I'll be signing up for any wilderness survival retreats anytime soon. Or ever. I'm quite happy here on my couch, with my Netflix, and my expired first-aid kit in the car, and my cat who judges my movie choices. It's safer here.
Anyway. My brain is fried. I need to watch something fluffy now. Maybe a documentary about puppies. Yeah. Puppies.
7/10 - decent
- alex