The Road

Man (Viggo Mortensen) and Boy (Kodi Smit-McPhee) travel south along a road long deserted by humanity, literally and figuratively. It's an unrelentingly gloomy story and mostly faithful to Cormac McCarthy's masterpiece source novel, where dread, despair and desperation amidst the unrelenting dangers of broken civilization made for its own uniquely suspenseful plotting. John Hillcoat's film successfully adapts the book's honest moments of futility and hopelessness, resulting in some of the most harrowing images seen this year in a major release movie. However, while the film is perfectly commendable, McCarthy's towering bleak prose and despairing notions of human nature does something the film can't: unnerve your soul. –Hillary Titley