Tilda Swinton & Michael Shannon Are Singing Through It in the Trailer for The End

It would be a surreal experience to be alive after the world has ended. A world you may or may not have played a huge role in ending. But who can say? Only the people left alive in the trailer for The End, the new movie musical from Neon, which features Tilda Swinton and Michael Shannon singing their way through Joshua Oppenheimer’s narrative feature debut.

A new trailer for the well-reviewed festival film was revealed on Monday, November 4, and it is setting up a bold and quirky premise ahead of its December 6, 2024 theatrical debut.

What is The End About and Who Stars in It?

The film, which also stars George MacKay, Moses Ingram, Bronagh Gallagher, Tim McInnerny, Lennie James, and Michael Shannon alongside Swinton, centers on an extremely wealthy family who have been living underground for some years after the end of the world. An end that they may or may not have had a hand in precipitating (spoiler alert: they are definitely directly involved). Things get turned upside down in the bunker when Moses Ingram’s character, Girl, shows up seemingly out of nowhere and begins to create cracks in the world set up by Swinton and Shannon for their family’s protection.

Neon also released some promotional images in tandem with the trailer release:

The film made its debut at the Telluride Film Festival to mixed reviews from critics (and a mostly positive one from our own Jericho Tadeo at the Toronto International Film Festival), who found the story gutsy and evocative, but left several viewers on the fence about the musical aspect.

Still, who doesn’t love a big, bold swing when it comes to the movies? Particularly in a non-superhero sense. And, frankly, the world could do with a few more movie musicals that aren’t based on preexisting intellectual property. The official synopsis for The End is as follows:

Twenty-five years after environmental collapse left the Earth uninhabitable, Mother, Father and Son are confined to their palatial bunker, where they struggle to maintain hope and a sense of normalcy by clinging to the rituals of daily life–until the arrival of a stranger, Girl, upends their happy routine. Son, a naïve twenty-something who has never seen the outside world, is fascinated by the newcomer, and suddenly the delicate bonds of blind optimism that have held this wealthy clan together begin to fray. As tensions rise, their seemingly idyllic existence starts to crumble, with long-repressed feelings of remorse and resentment threatening to destroy the family’s delicate balance. But their reckoning with difficult truths also points to a different way forward, one based on acceptance, love, and a capacity for change.

Oppenheimer co-wrote the film with Rasmus Heisterberg, a Danish screenwriter known for his work on 2009’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and 2012’s A Royal Affair. Oppenheimer himself is an Oscar-nominated documentary filmmaker, known for the 2012 film, The Act of Killing, and 2014’s The Look of Silence. The songs were written in tandem by Joshua Schmidt — who did the music — and Oppenheimer, who wrote the lyrics.