The year is 2016, solar flares have caused the Earth’s temperature to rise 10 degrees Celsius. It is near impossible to be outside during the day because of the sun’s enormous radiating heat. Literally scorching the planet, and anything that is out for more than a few hours. A few humans have survived this hellish landscape. Sisters Marie and Leonie, and two men named Phillip and Tom travel towards the mountains in a car with covered windows, siphoning gas from wrecked and abandoned vehicles. There is little to no water left on Earth, but rumor has it it still rains in the mountains. This film is called “Hell”, meaning “bright” in German. Released in 2011, directed by Tim Fehlbaum, Hell is a post apocalyptic horror/thriller movie set in Germany. It has an English dubbed version, but personally I don’t think that the emotion is conveyed the same. I tried watching it in English but didn’t get very far before I switched it back to German. Without giving away too much of the ending, I’ll just say that the characters encounter some other survivors and things get...a little crazy. It shows that in a climate disaster, the real threat isn’t necessarily the deteriorating environment, it’s how people react to it. This movie serves as a great example of what happens when people are driven to the extremes by climate change. I didn’t write my wiki post about this movie, even though it deals with the direct effects of climate change more directly and frequently than the book I read (Feed, M.T. Anderson), because this movie is in no way appropriate for classroom viewing. It is very violent and has some possibly triggering scenes of forced sexual advances. However, I do think it is interesting to compare different possible future worlds that have been affected by climate change, and this movie poses a possible future that could lend a hand to answering the question, what will our world look like as it heats up, and how will people react to it?
