A Murder at the End of the World – Survivors

By: Gladys Luna

Darby (Emma Corrin) and Bill (Harris Dickinson) drive into the night on their way to a location where the serial killer they are after had taken one of his victims. Then, we are flash forward to the present day where Darby is still looking for answers and ways to discover who killed Bill. It appears that going over her past has helped her go in the right direction to accomplish her goal. After promising that she will find Bill’s murderer, she goes to the library where everyone is gathered again for a presentation; as soon as she enters the room, she could feel the prying eyes of the others on her. However, she has set hers on Rohan (Javed Khan) who had proven to be more affected for Bill’s death than anyone else. Darby walks straight to him in order to learn more about how he met Bill, but before the man can say anything Lu Mei (Joan Chen) interrupts them giving Rohan the chance to escape. They exchange some brief words before Lee (Brit Marling) shows up asking for a moment with Darby and taking the chance to ask her about what she found in the footage but the young woman decides to lie saying she didn’t find anything of value and instead questions her about why she sent her to do the dirty job when she was capable to do it herself. Right that moment, Andy (Clive Owen) comes into the picture not allowing his wife to say another word. He knows Darby is grieving and wastes no time in confirming it. Before they can move on with the conversation, Lee suggests they take their seats and get ready for Ziba’s (Pegah Ferydoni) presentation but Darby is not in the mood for any of that. While everyone is settling in, she takes the opportunity to interrogate Tomas (Daniel Olson), a waiter with whom she has crashed outside Bill’s room and who had presumably delivered some tea prior to his death. She wants to know who ordered the tea for Bill yet he avoids the question and continues doing his work. All of this encounter doesn’t go unnoticed by Sian (Alice Braga) who confesses that it was Andy who had invited her to the retreat since he appears to see some potential in her. So, Sian advises Darby not to bite the hand that might be her biggest source of support. Ziba’s presentation begins and she talks about how the reason she decided to accept going to the retreat was Bill, himself, as she looked up to him. The woman decides to dedicate a song for him and as soon as she begins to sing it, Darby disconnects from it imagining her and then the others wearing the white, inexpressive mask that was worn by whom she assumed was her ex-partner’s killer. Next, she sees Tomas walking out of the room and follows him all the way to the kitchen where there’s Marius (Christopher Gurr) telling everyone that now that Bill’s death has gone public, it is very likely that reporters will be looking for answers so their only job is to protect Mr. Ronson’s reputation. Darby follows Tomas to the back of the room demanding answers from him and the waiter says that everything happening at the hotel is strictly confidential and in order to make sure of that the employees are well paid enough for it. He understands her desperation and, in an attempt to help her without getting into any trouble, he just confesses that he was ordered to deliver three cups of tea the night he died. On her way out, Darby sees a chart where the distribution of the hotel and the guests’ rooms are displayed so she takes notes of all of it by writing the information on her left arm.

A while later, once she is at her room she asks Ray (Edoardo Ballerini) to help her find any connection between Bill and the rest of the guests but nothing that comes out of it  that proves to be anything of value, except for the fact that we finally learn that Rohan is a climatologist and an environmental activist who had been in the spotlight for a number of incidents. However, after a while he retreated from all of his revolutionary work. The frustration gets the best of her so she decides to light a cigarette and think while staring at the nothingness outside the window. That is when she sees someone walking into the night and she decides to follow them. They walk all the way to a faraway hill where the snow has now turned into ice making the road hard to walk. Darby keeps herself at a certain distance being careful of not to be seen, but suddenly she steps on a rock making some noise. This causes the person to turn their back and revealing to be wearing the same white mask that has been torturing her. Darby immediately looks for a place to hide while the other person returns trying to figure out where the noise came from. Fortunately, they don’t see her but the young woman, smart as she is, manages to find something she could remember and use as a clue. She spots the other person’s shoes keeping a mental photograph of those for future reference. When the other person is certain that no one is following them, they continue their way. Darby waits a little before following them again until she sees how they climb to the top of a hill using a flashlight to send a message in morse code saying “One down. Still a go” and someone else replied to them from the other side.

When Darby returns to her room, she is almost freezing due to the rough weather she was exposed to but Ray quickly helps her to reach her regular body temperature level. While reminiscing about what she just saw, she also recalls a time when she and Bill went to meet Marta (Karina Arroyave), the only survivor of the serial killer looking for something that might help him find him. Back to the present, someone knocks at her door and when she opens it she sees Lee standing there carrying a half awake Zoomer (Kellan Tetlow). She lets her in meanwhile the other woman explains that the kid tends to have nightmares. Therefore, she carries him through the hallway until he goes back to sleep but tonight is just not working so she lets him down on the couch then asks Ray to put some music to calm him down. Darby is very much confused about the woman’s presence there and Lee knows it well. She confesses that she truly wants to help her find Bill’s murderer, but she can’t if she’s not honest about everything she knows. Therefore, Darby shows her the footage; even though Lee is not able to recognize the person behind the mask she does know what it is used for, which is to avoid facial recognition by the AI. Lee takes this time to tell her about how she met Bill six years ago and how their shared values and beliefs about the risks of the AI had brought them together, confirming that they were nothing but good friends. Sometime after, they realize that Zoomer had finally fallen asleep and Lee asks for Darby’s permission to spend the night since she didn’t want to wake him up and the other one agrees.

The next morning came along with a surprise invitation to join the group at the Southern Summit for a walk. She meets everyone there and takes the chance to spend some time alone with Rohan who confesses that Bill had helped him go sober; before that, he used to sink himself in alcohol unable to bare the truth about the inevitable dead of the world as we know it but Bill gave him a different perspective about everything and that took him out of his misery. He had remained completely sober until that tragic night that took his friend’s life. Halfway to their secret destination Rohan feels a pain in his chest that for a moment, scares Darby but he explains that he had suffered a heart failure two years ago and now he uses a pacemaker to keep him going. Before they knew it, they had reached the place where Andy wanted to take them, which is an isolated area where they could see robots building bridges and tunnels that would represent a big change for humanity, all of these created by Oliver (Ryan J. Haddad) , something that fascinates Darby.

The tour ends and now they are back to a tent where they have to change back to their regular shoes. When Darby goes to pick hers, she sees the same shoes that the person she had followed the prior night was wearing so she waited to see who would pick them up and that person turns out to be no other that Rohan who sits next to her to change his shoes and Darby takes the chance to repeat the message he had sent accusing him of being the person behind the mask that had visited Bill’s room the night he died. Rohan didn’t react so well to the accusation, making him leave the tent, something that didn’t go unnoticed by Andy and Sian that were standing there.

Later on, while Darby was at the dining room having some tea, she sees Zoomer wearing a helmet playing a virtual reality game that he invites her to play as soon as he sees her and she agrees. She tries the game for a bit then returns the helmet to the kid. While they are talking, the kid blurts out that his parents fight a lot about the future but when she tries to know more about it, Andy interrupts them and asks him to go back to his game. The two adults talk about technology and some experiments he is working on. He then drops the unexpected news when he informs her that he has arranged everything for her to go back home that same night. He is aware of what she has been doing and assures her that Bill was not murdered and he has enough material to prove it – something that was already handed to the police so there is no crime to pursue. That means her presence there has turned only into something that has started to bother her guests. Darby returns to her room to pack and sees the news where they inform about Bill’s death. We are then taken back to the past where the two were finally face to face with Marta and she told them that unfortunately she didn’t see the killer’s face but remembers his smell, bleach and after shave, and how she scratched his face which helped her escape from him. The pair shows them the earrings they found on another victim and she says they belonged to her mother. She also questions them about the reason why they are investigating. Darby replies that she wants to make sure that every woman knows they matter. This confession moves something in Marta who recalls having an item of use for them which is a university pin that Bill took a photo of and posted it to the unsolved mysteries web page they were part of. In a span of minutes, they get the information they need about the pin something that makes Marta to trust even more in them asking them not to give up on their search.

Back to the present, Darby pays a visit to Rohan’s room and tells him that she knows how much he cared about Bill and that she believes he still does and she is there to listen to him. However, before anything else happens, Todd (Louis Cancelmi) shows up saying that they are ready to take her back home so he escorts her to her room and she asks him to wait for her outside while she picks up her things. She takes as much as she can and plans to escape through the backdoor but before she does, she gets a call from Rohan saying that he still cares for Bill and will tell her everything he knows. He admits that he and Bill had “a plan” but the other guy had discovered something and that was why he had gone to his room that night wearing the mask so he would not be discovered. Although, when he got there, Bill appeared to be drunk or high which made him mad at him so he left the room. However, he believes he has some idea about what Bill had discovered. Before he can say anything, he starts to yell which makes Darby to run straight to his room followed by Todd. They don’t find him yet Marius shows up out of nowhere saying that “Panicked” had called from people at “Heart front” and then he notices Darby standing there. They hear a scream coming from the hallway and they run towards it and see Rohan there laying on the floor. Sian checks on his vitals but the man is already dead. Andy shows up and when he sees what has happened, he looks at Todd and asks him to take everyone underground.