Sunset is about the tensions and drama that surrounds a group of friends when the US is threatened by the possibility of a nuclear attack. The group must make the difficult decision of evacuating their homes or facing a nuclear blast.
Sunset is about the tensions and drama that surrounds a group of friends when the US is threatened by the possibility of a nuclear attack. The group must make the difficult decision of evacuating their homes or facing a nuclear blast.
I think Sunset would have benefitted a lot from a more focused message. This movie juggled so many plates that not a single one of them stood out and left the audience with a muddled picture of what the movie was supposed to be about, which is a shame because it attempted to tackle some good topics that we as a society could benefit from. There was just too much going on that a not even single plot point could develop, which meant by the end I was left disappointed.
The characters also seemed like caricatures of archetypes you would see in other dramas, which makes them very unrelatable. Dialogue and character development are essential in a good drama and Sunset fell short in both categories. The characters would often engage in conversation that felt very unnatural just for the sake of telling the audience how another character feels about the situation. One of the biggest mistakes writers make early on in their careers is they spell things out for the audience in dialogue too much, which has prompted the adage “show, don’t tell.” Sunset could have learned from this advice.
As with most amateur films Sunset also lacked in some of the most important aspects of production. The two things that most filmmakers get wrong when they first start out is lighting and sound, and Sunset was no exception. There were some good-looking scenes, especially towards the end, but Sunset used a lot of natural light with little to no color correction leaving a lot of over exposed window scenes. The audio wasn’t terrible but some of the voice overs that came from TV’s would play at unnatural volumes and they were not directional, so it didn’t feel like it was coming from the room, it just sounded like a voice over track.
Sunset had a lot of potential for discussing great topics like the political climate, the dangers of nuclear warfare and how it affects people’s lives, but I think it focused too heavily on the comparably insignificant disagreements between the characters. If there was the threat of a nuclear winter it just doesn’t seem believable that people would be arguing whether to leave the blast zone or not.
