THE TRUTHERNET APOCALYPSE is an ultra-low budget movie in which events are only depicted via webcam.
A scientist gives a message for the eponymous organization concerning an upcoming apocalypse, and the members of this group have a virtual meeting to identify the threat as well as discuss ways to prevent it from wiping out humanity.
A quick clarification: the members call themselves "Skeptics" even though in these types of contexts the term refers to people who take no position on an issue but simply evaluate the positions taken by others via the available evidence. Since every member explicitly has a position on how humankind will end, none are skeptics according to the standard meaning of the word. I could not tell whether this divergence from standard terminology was intentional or not.
Now to the movie itself:
The set-up is hokey, the delivery by at least some of the actors wooden, and the whole topic perhaps a bit too "out there" for mainstream audiences. Yet, there were certainly seeds of good ideas here, and the dialogue, though not always delivered in a naturalistic manner, was interesting enough to keep me watching.
Since much of the discussion centers around various scenarios on how humanity could end, this film is more likely to be appreciated by those who think about such things. Given that this movie was made early in the Covid Pandemic, that would have been a larger crowd than during normal times.
As the members of the group carry on their discussions, the presumed apocalypse already begins in the outside world and even affects participants in the virtual meeting.
This portion of the movie could have been done much, much better. Several times, I did not realize what was happening until minutes later because the movie did not make it clear. There was a complete absence of dramatic tension which should have accompanied what is on its face an increasingly threatening situation.
The nature of the threat as presented seemed silly but had unused potential for horror. David Cronenberg's SHIVERS (1975), for example, centered around a threat that could have come off as equally silly, yet he was able to extract genuine horror out of it. The change that the people undergo, including the eyes, seems outwardly closest to that in STEPFORD WIVES (1975) which is also a horror film. On the other hand, perhaps the threat was really meant to be as silly as it is presented in the service of irony, given how unhappy the members of the group seem to be.
So, overall this is a poor execution of an interesting idea, interesting at least to those who think about the end of the world.
