Z for Zachariah

A nuclear war has destroyed all but one green valley, where the daughter of a farmer-preacher is the lone survivor—or so she thinks. In the opening scene of the limited release Z for Zachariah, Ann (Margot Robbie) works in a hazmat suit gathering books from a library that she can take back to her green valley. She plants crops, milks cows, prays, and plays the organ in her father’s church.

A scientist, who survived the nuclear fallout thanks to a special suit he designed, stumbles into Ann’s valley. John (a superb Chiwetel Ejiofor) thinks a weather pattern must have kept the valley alive; Ann says God kept it alive. The two assume that they are the last man and woman alive, and early on he mentions the children they might have. But then Caleb (Chris Pine), a miner who was underground during the nuclear attack, also finds his way to the valley. He flashes his blue eyes at Ann—trouble!

Caleb prays before he eats, like Ann, but he has a subtle craftiness like the serpent entering Eden. John’s goodness is also debatable. The viewer will have to wrestle with whom to trust all the way through. I know where I stand.

Director Craig Zobel gave his elevator pitch of the movie in an interview with Grantland: What if you retold the story of Adam and Eve, “but you didn’t know … which was Adam and which was the snake?” (The title of the film comes from a 1974 novel of the same name by Robert C. O’Brien, but screenwriter Nissar Modi stripped O’Brien’s plot and the characters for parts.)

The tensions of two men vying for a woman develop into a couple sexual scenes, one of which is graphic and earned the film a PG-13 rating, along with a handful of curse words. The film earns its “thriller” moniker only in the sense that the future of humanity depends on whether Ann ends up with Adam or the serpent.