‘Z for Zachariah’ (2015) is a post-apocalyptic sci-fi film directed by Craig Zobel and starring Margot Robbie, Chiwetel Ejiofor, and Chris Pine. Based on Robert C. O’Brien’s 1974 novel, the plot, however, is quite different from the book. It shares similarities with the 1959 film ‘The World, the Flesh and the Devil,’ involving a love triangle among the last survivors on Earth—here portrayed by a black engineer, a white woman, and a white man. The movie was mostly positively received due to its simplistic plot and complicated characters, and because it has a purposely ambiguous ending, we decided to explain it in more detail.
Ann lives alone but prays for company
The story of ‘Z For Zachariah’ takes place in post-apocalypse; we don’t get many details regarding what happened. All we know is that the majority of the country is radioactive except for Ann’s homestead, which is shielded by the nearby mountains and weather patterns that work to divert most of the radioactivity from the valley. She also has a supply of fresh water fed by underground aquifers. Ann used to live with her parents and her younger brother, but all of them decided to depart the farm and look for the survivors, and they never came back.
One day, while Ann is walking around the valley, she runs into a man. He wears some kind of weird suit and pulls a cart that serves as his house behind him. The man suddenly starts taking off his suit and stops to breathe in the fresh and unirradiated air of the valley. Ann is watching him from a distance, and the man soon decides to take a bath in small pond that is fed by a waterfall that comes from outside of the valley.
Ann runs toward the pond to warn him that the water he is bathing in radioactive but his misinterprets her intentions and tells her to stay away. Ann managed to let him know that he needed to get out of the water FAST, and he listened to her, immediately checking himself with a dosimeter. The man is highly radioactive and starts vomiting immediately. Ann tries to help him, and he instructs her to give him special medication that is supposed to fight off the effects of ionizing radiation, as well as Prussian Blue.
Ann manages to transport the man back to her house, and she gives him a good hose-down with clean water from her own backyard. The man is in a poor state and hangs on between life and death, with Ann praying by his side every night because she doesn’t want to be alone any longer.
John turns out to be a valuable addition to Ann’s household
The man eventually makes a full recovery; we learn that his name is John Loomis and that he is an engineer who spent the majority of the crisis in a government underground bunker before he could take it no longer. Ann first thinks that John is looking for his wife, but John says that he has no family; he is all alone in the world. John is impressed by Ann’s farming skills and the fact that he managed to survive all alone by being basically self-sufficient. Ann retorts that she almost starved to death during winter since she had no way to conserve her summer crop yields to last her over winter.
John finds ways to improve Ann’s farm. He teaches her how to manually extract gas from gas station pumps, and this gets the old tractor running, meaning that Ann can now grow more food during the summer to last her over winter. He also sees a lot of potential in a nearby waterfall, meaning that with the right parts, he can convert it into hydroelectricity, but to do that, he needs beams and planks from the nearby small church to create the wheel.
Ann is at first against it because her father built the church and held sermons there; she is a practicing Christian and believes that god provides them with everything and that there is no reason to build the wheel. John is not so big on religion, but he respects Ann’s wishes and drops the plans to create the generator.
John turns out to be a man of character
Now that they have been living together for some time, John and Ann settle into a simple lifestyle, which leads to Ann developing feelings toward John. John turns out to be a completely different man while he is drunk, but Ann is willing to ignore that as long as she is not alone.
One night, she prepares a nice dinner and brings a bottle of wine from the local store. At first John is against drinking but eventually accepts a few glasses, Ann intoxicated starts flirting with John and even implies she wants to have sex with him. John denies her, telling her that sexual relationship will change them and he is simply not ready for this, they are not ready for this. He admits that there is an attraction between them, but he simply considers that it’s a bad time for them to be distracted by this. Ann agrees, and the two are on good terms.
Soon after, they notice that some food is missing, and they keep seeing shadowy figures.
Where did Caleb come from?
The source of their missing supplies turns out to be Caleb, a survivor from the mines. He is going down south to see whether there are any survivors but won’t say no to dinner and a place to recover for a few days while he is irradiated. John is pissed that Ann has invented him in the house since Calbe planned on simply camping on their land for a few days.
Ann prepares a nice dinner. Caleb tells them a story about what happened in the mines. He tells them that his coworkers eventually killed themselves due to murderous rage, and John, wanting to one-up Caleb’s story, tells about his experience of running into a starving boy who was suffering from late-stage radiation sickness. At first, he says that he simply left the boy on the side of the road but later confides to Ann that he actually killed the boy and that he believes that boy was actually Ann’s younger brother, who would have been about the same age as the boy that John killed and since he saw the photo of Ann’s brother, he admitted that they looked similar.
Caleb truly turns out not to be a trouble at all; in fact, he is a religious person like Ann, and the two like spending time together. Caleb also makes attempts to get closer to John, as the two go turkey hunting, and Caleb jokes that the person who shoots the turkey first gets to have Ann.
Ann tells Caleb about John’s plan to disassemble the wooden church to create a water wheel, and Caleb wants to help, but now, John seems to be backtracking on what he said and no longer wants to build the water wheel since he is aware that the religion might be one thing that he doesn’t have in common with Ann that Caleb has.
Sensing the attraction between Caleb and Ann, John decides to be a bigger man and tells Ann that he won’t mind if Ann pursues a romantic relationship with Caleb. But behind his well-meaning words, there is a ton of hurt; John also remarks that “whites should be with whites,” and despite seemingly being okay with Ann and Caleb “dating,” he throws a poisonous comment here and there. John eventually admits that it took Caleb to realize what kind of feelings he has for Ann really.
Ann sleeps with Caleb, and he now no longer wants to leave the homestead
The three of them eventually do start working on the water wheel and Caleb turns out to be a massive help, all the while he no longer hides his attraction toward Ann. Several weeks have passed by, and Ann organizes a big dinner with alcohol. All three of them are drunk and engage in fun activities, such as a midnight swim in the local pond.
On their way back, Ann and John walk alone, and John tells Ann that he loves her, but before he and Ann can engage in sexual activities, John passes out on her bed, completely drunk. Ann is a bit disappointed and goes to seek solace in Caleb’s arms. The two have sex, and when the morning comes, John is aware of what transpired. He sees Caleb touching Ann gently while she is using every opportunity to evade both of them in the same room. After breakfast, the time has come for the water wheel to be mounted, and as they are setting up the wheel, Caleb admits that he won’t go anywhere; there’s probably nothing down south anyway. This meddles with John’s plans for the future, and he is visibly distracted.
John most likely pushed Caleb off the cliff
Mounting the water wheel was a success, and as Caleb is using a robe to climb out of the radioactive pond, the fact that he is wearing a bulky protective suit messes with his balance, and he almost falls off the edge of the cliff. John manages to save him at the last second and pulls him a little over the edge. But Caleb slips again, and this time, John is contemplating whether to push him off the cliff or pull him toward himself.
The scene cuts to Ann, who is at the farm, and for the first time in forever, she can hear the buzz of electricity as all appliances within the house are finally working again. The generator is successful, and she waits for Caleb and John to return from the pond. John returns, and Ann wants to talk to him about what happened between her and Caleb last night. John interrupts her that it doesn’t matter Caleb is gone. He took the protective suit and continued down south, telling John to tell Ann that she could have anything from the stuff that he had left behind.
Ann cannot believe what she is hearing, and she runs out from her farm and starts searching the fields that overlook the valley in the hope of seeing Caleb somwhere. She is heartbroken and returns to the shed to play the organ as John quietly sneaks in to listen to her.
Now, the obvious question is whether John really pushed Caleb off the cliff, and he most likely did, no matter the fact that it was never shown on camera. In fact, the director confirmed as much in his interview with Time Magazine.
Did John drop Caleb?
Zobel: I think you know.
I think he does…
Zobel: Yeah. I feel like it’s heavily hinted at.
It really doesn’t make sense that Caleb would leave just about any possession he has, including his tent, and leave into the uncertain, heavily irradiated zone without so much as bringing a bottle of water and a slice of bread with him. Yeah, you can make the argument that he wanted to leave Ann as fast as he could not face; you can make an argument that he felt he owed John as much after John saved his life twice. But he most likely didn’t. Humans are not like that at all.
If you’ve read the book on which the movie was based, you are aware that the movie is significantly different than the book, and only the most basic premise was taken. You are also aware that the ending of the book is far, far darker.
In any case, Ann and John are left alone in the end on the homestead, not due to being fated to be together but because John killed Caleb (most likely).
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