It's easy to take shots at 50s horror flicks featuring people you'd never heard of before, nor will ever hear from again. But that such a comparatively modern film, featuring name stars such as Nigel Hawthorne and Julie Christie could be so mind-numbingly bad beggars description.<br /><br />The opening screen reads "When Things Stopped". It's puzzlingly inaccurate as we know officials have working helicopters. Could the film makers be unawares of the complex infrastructure needed to keep those delicate machines flying? Hardly something you'd expect after societal collapse. The opener is accurate in one sense, though as much of the film left me feeling the plot - what there was of it - had stopped.<br /><br />Christie? She practically send a surface mail letter in to stand for her performance. Much of the film has her so listless that one wonders if the character (or actress) has been shot with an elephant tranq dart.<br /><br />The bit with the wall that's a gateway to another reality? Excuse me? What possible reason would Christie's character have for wanting to return to her dismal reality after her first time through? The whole concept made absolutely no sense whatsoever. And the kids dancing around the giant egg? Just what drugs did someone slip in the writers' drinking water? <br /><br />A memorable passage from Ayn Rand's book THE FOUNTAINHEAD has a character reading something which is essentially gibberish and thinking it "...must be profound because he didn't understand it." Wanting to be sure about that here, I showed it to a friend who, at the time, was working on her psych doctorate (with a Lit minor). The film over I asked her if there was something, some deep, subtle meaning I was missing. She replied by pointing out that some non-conforming stories are trying to tie into (she spewed forth psych-babble-double-talk) and make reference to literary (more jargon). Pausing, she looked at the now turned off TV screen, then back to me and went on ...<br /><br />"And then there's films such as this which are just garbage, plain and simple."