While spreading hatred and fighting over life choices, ethnicity, class, and other social dividers, we have forgotten to address what the real issues are, i.e., environmental degradation aggravated by our actions, which threatens the existence of not only humanity but life on this blue planet as we know it. Not only do we choose to be deliberately ignorant and delude ourselves into thinking it will not affect us, we deny the truth and are even prepared to wage war to uphold a flawed, pathetic belief system. MacKenzie Donaldson’s dystopian survival drama, All the Lost Ones, offers a glimpse into the horrifying future we are headed towards through a narrative that paints ecological collapse in the backdrop of a conflict that emphasizes the age-old realization: the existence of humankind as a species is indeed the worst crisis of all.
Spoilers Ahead
The Dystopian World
A prologue section at the beginning of All the Lost Ones introduces viewers to the troubling reality of a world where society has collapsed following a civil war. After environmental degradation contaminates water sources in the United States, which results in the death of thousands of people, a section of the populace, concerned for the sustainability of the planet and of future generations, begins protesting outside the Capitol in large numbers to persuade Congress to pass a clean water bill. It is bad enough that one has to pressure and question the serving government to take environmental issues into consideration, but it is much worse if one has to fight their own who are misguided enough to consider the truth a conspiracy. The protesters are labelled as Environmental Extremists (EE) by the global warming deniers, hunter-gatherer lifestyle believers, and ‘traditional’ conservatives, who believe God is by their side and decide to take matters into their own hands as the rightful ‘protectors’ of humanity. They form the militia group known as the United Conservancy (UC), which leads a violent uprising across the country that completely destabilizes the government. The UC takes over the majority of the Eastern Seaboard over the next few months, and EE turns out to be the only resistance active to counter their aggression. As the nation comes to a screeching halt following the conflict between these two factions, civilians are caught in the middle, forced to leave their home to survive, and need to make their allegiance clear.
Why Did Nia and Her Found Family Go On the Run?
Following the prologue, the narrative begins with a party scene—an unexpected scenario in the context of the present situation. We meet a group of surviving civilians who have banded together, living in a settlement in the countryside and celebrating the six-month anniversary of their living together; even small moments of happiness need to be rejoiced in in tough times, after all. The common factor that has united the survivors is the fact that all of them abhor the tyrannical presence of the UC. One of the survivors, Nia, has been infected with waterborne contamination, and she gets assured by her doctor sister, Penny, that with due care she will recover in no time. Ethan, Nia’s supportive, caring boyfriend, is naïve to a fault, and upon learning that Nia has fallen sick, he wonders if surrendering to the UC is the most practical choice they have at the moment. Little does he realize that such an option is not acceptable to Nia or Penny, as they are persons of color, and almost the entirety of the oppressive UC fraternity is vile racist scum, as the narrative showcases later on. One of the survivors, Jacob, has begun a relationship with Penny, and their conversation highlights the tragic reality of the bleak and uncertain future. Mikael, a former member of the armed force, appears to be the leader of the band of survivors, and his wife, Nancy, and their son, Ray, are present with him at the settlement as well. Dawn is the eldest member in the settlement, and the horrors of the present situation have not broken her spirit. Tired of running from the UC, and fearing for the future, Nia hopes to join EE as she eagerly listens to their radio broadcast to assess the proximity of EE from range count.
Already down from the struggle of surviving in secrecy and her fight against the unnamed waterborne sickness, Nia’s world is turned upside down when she realizes she is pregnant with Ethan’s child. It is unclear whether the fear of being unable to provide a secure life to her child leads her to have suicidal thoughts, as she suddenly decides to take a swim in the nearby lake, much to the surprise of Penny and Ethan. A reality check hits moments later as the eye-gouged-out corpse of an EE member comes floating along the lake, showing the barbaric tendencies of the members of the UC. Ethan is foolish enough to still believe that if they surrender, their lives will be spared, as they are civilians who are not associated with any faction at present, and Nia can’t help but express her frustration with his simpleton ideology.
Things go sideways when, during a supply run in a nearby city, Nia comes across Hank, a racist UC supporter who holds her at gunpoint and plans to give her up to the UC in exchange for cash. Nia shoots Hank, who manages to escape with his son, Wyatt, but not before injuring Ray by shooting him in the leg, severing a major artery. As Nia and Dawn take Ray and return to the settlement and reunite with the rest of the members, a couple of UC members arrive at the location and kill an unarmed Nancy, and despite that, Ethan and Jacob consider it wise to surrender. However, Mikael and Penny had other plans as they managed to gain the upper hand over the UC operatives. A third UC member, a teenager named Ripley, manages to escape by driving away. Mikael is grief-stricken at Nancy’s death, and as one of the captive operatives continues blabbering racist rants about the UC being the chosen, rightful leaders, and shows his ugly perspective regarding Nancy’s (a person of color) demise; Mikael brutally stabs him to death. Realizing that the escaped member will bring the whole cavalry into the settlement, the survivors plan to escape, and Jacob comes up with an escape route through the waterfront and plans to lead them to Manitou, where UC presence is minimal as of now. Ray, devastated upon learning his mother’s fate, isn’t able to make it as he succumbs to his injuries, and Mikael decides to stay by his family—completely giving up on his life. Dawn, Jacob, Nia, Penny, and Ethan escape just in time, as Conrad, the leader of the local UC unit, arrives at the settlement with his support. Just like how Conrad has indoctrinated Ripley with the dastardly ideology of UC, he coerces her to shoot an injured Mikael to death.
Did Nia Survive At The End?
There is a strong racial discourse at play in the narrative, as people like Jacob, Ethan, and Dawn have this false hope that the UC members will offer them refuge if they simply surrender, ignoring the blatant truth that these pathetic xenophobic logic-deniers have no willingness to tolerate a worldview that opposes their own, are filled with hatred to their core. People of color, like Nia and Penny, who are well aware of how vile the roots of the UC are, have a hard time convincing their found family members that it’s of no use to hope to reason with the UC anyway. To save Jacob and Penny from getting caught by Conrad’s men, Dawn decides to surrender as a means of distraction and hopes she will survive being held as a captive. However, she is killed after being identified as one of the members of the settlement, and this casts a shadow of doubt over Ripley’s mind, who questions Conrad on whether Dawn was an EE member to have deserved such a fate. It is Ripley’s changed perspective that leads her to distract Conrad’s men to take their attention elsewhere, despite noticing Penny and Jacob hiding in the woods. As the remaining survivors continue their journey, Nia reveals news about her pregnancy to Ethan—much to his shock and joy.
Jacob reveals that Hank, in fact, is his stepfather, who had indoctrinated him and his brother, Wyatt, with UC ideology, which makes the survivors wary of his motivations. However, Jacob maintains that he had left that life in the past as soon as he managed to escape from his family and joined the survivors in the settlement. In order to escape through the waterfront, Jacob needs to get a hold of Hank’s boat keys. Jacob and Ethan manage to obtain the keys as Ethan kills Hank, and before leaving he lets Wyatt know that he is no longer bound by Hank’s vile influence and can join his brother to escape to safety. While escaping from oncoming UC forces, Ethan gets his leg injured in a bear trap and decides to stay behind, coercing Nia to move away to let their child have a future. Nia has been marred with a sense of purposelessness as she felt that, merely surviving on her own, she couldn’t make a change, and in his final moments, Ethan inspires Nia to take a hold of her own life and make the future safe for their child. Ethan takes a pill from Penny to ensure that he breathes his last before the UC holds him captive and tortures him for intel. On their way to the waterfront, Nia reveals to her elder sister Penny that she is pregnant.
Reaching the waterfront, the survivor trio of Jacob, Penny, and Nia realize that the UC has been anticipating their arrival already, but they still manage to sneak past them and almost manage to escape. However, Conrad confronts them alone near the waterfront, and even after a desperate Nia reveals her pregnancy, he remains adamant in taking all of them down. Help arrives in the most unexpected way as Wyatt, Jacob’s brother, appears to have decided to turn a new page in his life, and he shoots Conrad to death. Jacob ensures Penny, Nia, and Wyatt remain safe by sacrificing his life at the end. Listening to the radio broadcast, Nia is relieved to learn that EE presence is strong at their current destination, but her happiness appears momentary as a stray bullet shot by UC members ends up fatally injuring Penny. Losing so many people in her life within a day, Nia is bewildered whether the ideological stand is even worth it, but Penny encourages her to carry on in her final moments. Pretty sure the ‘My Body, My Choice’ motto, which Penny states as her final words, could have been placed in their conversation in a more subtle way, but I guess there are some, whom the movie aims to criticize, who cannot get a point unless it’s on the nose.
In All the Lost Ones’ ending, Nia and Wyatt are rescued by EE members, and a disheartened Nia remembers all the moments she had spent with the close ones. Even though she has reached safety, she is still uncertain about her future and that of her child’s. Despite what she feels, the sacrifices are worth it to ensure a better tomorrow for generations to come—a message our generation needs to realize before it is too late.
