begob Two couples struggle to survive through rural savagery, but who means it more? The best Irish film I've seen since From The Dark. Perfect balance in the pace and mood and characterisation, and excellent restraint in the story telling. Had no idea about this production when I pressed play, so at first I thought it was set in the north-west of the USA, then maybe Canada, before I twigged the accents (one English).It's not ambitious, but perfect for what it is. And the most perfect moment is when the the two couples form a symmetry of double dealing on the porch.Performances are good, use of music and sounds just right, and the editing keeps it clipping along. Cinematography is limited, but so wha'?Overall: Refreshing survival.

fpurkey-1 *** SPOILERS WARNING ***This is now on amazon prime, so there will probably be a lot more viewers. If you like end of the world stories without aliens & explosions, you'll like this, but it is a bit slow moving with an ambivalent ending.just to answer a few points raised by petern362 in his review:1) "However the point about the fisherman is well taken as most Irish lakes are stuffed with fish and could feed an army for ever."That really bugged me, they should have been out there every day fishing, and they had the equipment to do so. It was a pretty big lake in a pastoral setting.2) "Why did a tanker full of fuel decide to get stuck outside their house and then mysteriously lose all its contents overnight?"The police stopped the tanker on the road, scared off the driver, and were unable to empty the truck. The unarmed raiders who attacked the cabin stole the fuel, as the next day the police asked why the cabin-dwellers did not stop them.3) "When the raiders came, where did the firecrackers suddenly come from?"The police gave them signal rockets in an earlier scene, to call for help if needed.4) "Why was there only one sheep in a place like that? (Surely there would be hundreds)"May have been the only one who escaped their field. I'd think farmers would keep a close eye on them in a situation like this, and not let them wander around in the hundreds.5) "And finally, why did the power return for a few hours and then vanish again. To get power, there had to be a power station somewhere that had been started up. (That's no mean task if it had previously been switched off)"Maybe, just guessing, someone who did not know what they were doing started it up the wrong way, and it burned out. It some jury-rigged repair did not hold.6) "The premise of the film was good but it was not sufficiently thought out. People lived for 1000s of years without electricity, so there is no reason why they and the villagers could not have done the same."Modern people are soft, and have no idea how to live off the land (as shown here). Plus, there are a lot more people now to feed. The neighbor Tim was into sustainable living, which is why he had a garden, and would have been OK absent murderous neighbors. As mentioned, they should have been fishing from day one, setting traps for animals, planting potatoes, hiding their freaking food supply (!!!) from raiders, etc., but I think they just assumed everything would soon go back to normal so they did not really do any planning. Plus, people are morons in situations like this.Sad how the one girl had to basically become a prostitute at the end. I'd have liked some indication as to what happened to them (I thought this was going towards them OD'ing on sleeping pills). I'd think if you are Irish this film would resonate with the history of the potato famine, and they did tie potatoes into the story.It was not clear if the affair started at the cabin or before.

billcr12 Two couples live together in a cabin in rural Ireland at a lakeside. For some unexplained reasons, they are living off of stored goods, with no electricity and no guns to defend themselves. Their neighbor, however, does own a shotgun to protect his provisions, and also to hunt with.I'll start with what I liked. The two actors and two actresses are very good. The scenery of County Wickford is beautiful. The script is adult and intelligent. The problem is the slow pace and the fact that they live close to a lake which could theoretically solve their food supply forever. At one point, one of the men is there with a fishing pole. A fine source of protein awaits in the water; duh! The four people play poker, drink vodka, have sex, read books, and argue, due to being stuck together with none of the usual modern day distractions, such as TV, phones, or computers. The local police show up and steal most of their food, and their neighbor refuses to help them. They steal from him in the middle of the night, but are shot at the next time, and one of them is badly wounded. The remaining three must find a way to survive, amongst the petty bickering. One Hundred Days is a dark and depressing drama, depicting human nature as fairly selfish and primitive. It feels mostly like a four character stage play, than a feature length movie. A thumbs up for the fine cast, but a disappointing story, with no place to go in the end.

poc-1 Given the parlous state of the Irish economy, this movie at least seems to have got it's timing right. If there is to be an Irish apocalypse, then this feels very much what it might look like.I am a fan of post-apocalyptic movies, and as far as I know this is the only one set in Ireland. This is a pity because the Irish landscape is a testament to boom and bust, feast and famine. Apart from the newly-built, never-lived-in ghost estates, the country is dotted with abandoned farmhouses, huge mansions, and ruins of all ages going back thousands of years. Most movies of the type involve some kind of journey, where a plucky band of survivors have to reach some destiny to perhaps build the world anew. Skillfully the director has avoided such clichés and perhaps taking a leaf out of Cormac McCarthys "The Road", the actual cause of the apocalypse is not described. Two couples have decided to hole up in a lakeside holiday home having stocked up on necessities in the hope that electrical power and civil society will return.Unlike "The Road", hope is not entirely extinguished for the survivors. There are hints that order and civilisation might return, if they can hold out in their lakeside retreat. There is game in the fields and a self-sufficient hippie neighbour, so survival seems possible, if they can get their act together. Naturally it is not so simple and things go downhill quickly.Cinematography is beautiful and the characters are well drawn. You get a real gut feeling how desperate their situation is as they try to deal with hunger, depression, looters, infighting and betrayal. But the problem with this movie is that it is nearly all mood, and very slow plot and character progression. It's true, they have to make choices to survive and they are changed, but progression is quite slow the ending is quite muted. I was not looking for a happy ending or dramatic catharsis, but something a little less ambiguous. It did not seem worth all the scenes of gnawing hunger, looting, boredom and bickering in the claustrophobic cottage that the viewer is sat through for 83 minutes.Of course the options for the director were severely limited by the tiny budget. At around €275k (around $350k dollars), it is amazing to see what was achieved with such meager resources. I imagines that off screen life on the set might have been close to that depicted on screen, with actors and crew huddling around campfires drinking bovril and scavenged canned food.It is a mystery why it has not as yet been released on DVD, because it is definitely worth catching for fans of the genre. I look forward to what Conor Horgan does next.