As an environmental crisis causes heavy rain and widespread flooding in London a woman (Jodie Comer) gives birth. Her husband R (Joel Fry) finds her at the local hospital along with his newborn son Zeb to tell them their street is “gone”. They set out to escape London and the floods heading for R’s childhood home. 

The End We Start From is an insipid and entirely dull thriller that seems to have no purpose. I found the whole exercise to be an incredibly frustrating experience and writing this just makes me doubly so because I am pondering whether there was any value to it at all. The simple fact that virtually nothing of merit happens makes me think almost anything I say about the general plot will be a spoiler. And the fact that none of the characters have actual names and are credited with just letters makes me wonder what on earth the point of that was as well. 

The basic crux of the plot is that the woman, R and their son flee London. Go to R’s parents; G (Nina Sosanya) and N (Mark Strong). Then have to consider some further difficulties and go somewhere else and so on. But every time you think something challenging or bad is going to happen it just resolves itself. As a thriller this makes it entirely not thrilling. There is literally no moment of tension that lasts for longer than thirty seconds and I could give a number of examples that make me almost laugh with how stupid they are but I may as well leave you with some plot to unearth if you choose to watch it.

The environmental crisis and flooding are also never discussed, explained or generally that big of a challenge. The ending is patently ridiculous in relation to this plot aspect. 

So we have a thriller where the main driver of the plot is unimportant, the events that befall the protagonist are resolved almost immediately and without her actively solving them and where ultimately nothing happens in what I assume is a roughly 6-12 months period. 

It’s all so frustrating that I even started to wonder if the impending apocalypse of London flooding and the woman and child having to leave their home was some metaphor for child birth and being a mother. But that would be absolutely barking mad right? Well apparently not from my searches online as this apparently has resonated with some mothers and is what some people think the story is about. 

Why on earth did the likes of Jodie Comer, Mark Strong, Benedict Cumberbatch, Katherine Waterston etc opt to do this? I clearly missed the point.

Not a badly made film. But for me a completely pointless one with no entertainment merit at all.