The Domestics (2018)

Did you ever watch a movie that sticks with you for days, but not for good reasons? The Domestics is that movie for me.

Following an apocalyptic event, married couple Nina Monroe (Kate Bosworth) and Mark West (Tyler Hoechlin) are two of the survivors. The husband and wife team ventures across a countryside inhabited by deadly gangs in search of Nina’s mom and dad who stop answering the short-wave radio, the only means of communication.

My first problem comes with how most of America is dead. At the start of the film, viewers witness military planes crop dust people with what I assume is a deadly virus. After, it is never explained what happened. Who ordered this? How did people in the military just go along with killing their family, friends, and pretty much the entire country? Did no other country try to help?

Amazingly, Nina and Mark survive together and leave the relative safety of their Minneapolis suburb for Milwaukee and Nina’s mom. Quickly, viewers understand that Nina is a damsel in distress, relying on her husband for everything. It’s the apocalypse and she hasn’t learned how to shoot a gun. While it’s unclear how much time has passed, the telecommunications are down and the gangs are up. Wouldn’t shooting a gun be the first thing you’d want to master?

In the first of many perilous situations, Mark gives Nina the gun (even though she doesn’t know how to use it) and goes to protect them both against an interloper with a screwdriver. This is one of the many impractical and unrealistic choices made throughout the movie.

The drive to Mom’s house continues. On the map, it turns out to be something like two-hundred miles but takes the couple many days. Another big reveal is that Nina was in the process of divorcing Mark until the end of the world. Are we supposed to like her for staying with him because he could protect her? Nina comes off as a shallow, whiny, in-need-of-protection user for the first half of the movie, and I truly dislike her. I kept hoping someone in a gang would take her out.

Alas, no one does, and the second half of the movie is her big reveal. Nina learns to shoot a gun and morphs into a superhero. It’s now up to her to protect Mark and take out the gang of badies following them. In doing so, she also rescues her marriage, and the two ride off into the wilds happily ever after.