Does Mia find salvation?
Nowhere is set in a world ravaged by austerity. There are strict protocols in place that have crippled the livelihood of families everywhere across numerous parts of the globe. Women and children have been affected the worst, and live in constant fear of being killed.The narrative centers on a pregnant woman called Mia, who escapes with her boyfriend Nico onboard a shipping container bound for safer waters. However, Nico and Mia end up separated on the way, with Mia forced to go it alone and survive on a shipping container all alone for as long as she can.
Disaster inevitably strikes and with salvation seemingly miles away, Mia has seemingly insurmountable odds to survive.
What happened to Uma?
So who is this person? Well, it turns out this is Mia’s other daughter, Uma. She was taken by the authorities and Mia is wracked with guilt over this choice. When the regime took over, Mia and her family locked themselves inside their house while Nico would go out to get them food. Mia let Uma go outside to play one day though as she didn’t have enough room to play. In doing so, she was taken by the authorities and killed.
How does Mia survive in the shipping container?
She finds plastic lunchboxes, headphone wires, booze, some tools and tape, with the latter used to try and plug the bullet holes in the container to try and plug the holes in the container.
Is Nico still alive?
Yes, despite being separated in the containers early on, Nico is still alive and couldn’t call earlier on as his battery ran out. The driver screwed them over, leaving them outside the city limits. He tells them it’s going to take a few days for him to catch up. Unfortunately, the container is stuck out at sea with seemingly no way to reach her, given it’s tumbled off the ship she was on.
Later on in the movie though, Nico phones again and he explains he made it onto the next ship but he’s been shot and is losing a lot of blood. With his dying breaths they communicate, given Mia has given birth and is surviving out at sea with her babe. They close out with their goodbyes, and Mia is left to grieve the loss of her partner.
How does Mia escape?
Earlier on in the movie, Mia manages to use her pocket knife and the drill to begin forcing her way out the steel ceiling. Unfortunately, both break under the pressure. She eventually uses a rope wedged in the gaps and manages to use her own body weight (and strength) to pry the metal down and open up a route out.
With her baby Noa (named after her grandmother) in tow, Mia starts to survive on top of the container. She gets fresh water from the rain, which she keeps in the plastic lunchboxes she hasn’t tossed over with SOS messages, and she manages to fashion herself a net and catch fish, which she eats raw.
Mia miraculously only suffers from cold once, and she ignites the booze to heat up her babe during one particularly cold night. We do learn Mia is a teacher but of what? Survivalism perhaps?
Mia also manages to survive a nasty gash on her leg, which she stitches back up using a hook. Despite being cut pretty badly, she doesn’t pass out from blood loss, nor is it infected from the rusty metal, which is a bonus!
Eventually Mia makes a raft out of the inflatable plastic containers and decides to head out after surviving on fish for 26 days. Just before she leaves, the container starts to fill rapidly with water and Mia ends up stranded out at sea.
How does Nowhere end?
With the container underwater, Noa is safe in her inflatable container but Mia can’t find her. Thankfully, the power of deus ex machina sees a couple of random whales pop up out the ocean. They spray water on Noa and she starts crying in the water.
Mia swims over to Noa and survives by holding onto the side of the raft for the entire night and day. Mia throws raw fish out to seagulls hovering around, which captures the attention of fishermen nearby.
A random boat picks up Mia, who survives despite being exhausted and nearly drowning. Noa is also alive, and Mia is resuscitated by the fishers who do CPR on her. Mia survives and seems to be on her way to Ireland with her babe.
Ireland is supposed to be a safe haven but given we don’t know a whole lot more about what’s happened to the world, what awaits her there? We’re not going to find out as the film ends.
What’s happening to the world?
Nowhere imagines a world where a totalitarian regime is slowly sweeping the globe. Dubbed the “Not Enough At All” operation, austerity measures and a lack of resources have seen this group weasel their way in, promising that the shortages and measures would just be temporary. First they exterminated the elderly to deal with the shortages. Now, they’ve turned their attention to killing off pregnant women and kids.
Governments are falling and it seems like the same thing is happening around the world. It’s not explained fully, but through Nico and Mia’s dialogue, we do know that countries like Ireland, Iceland and Norway have managed to stop the massacres and are opposing the regime.
Nico, alongside other refugees, is convinced that Ireland won’t give in. However, Mia herself even says “governments are falling everywhere”. Will Ireland hold out? It seems like it’s only a matter of time, and we know the regime is brutal given we saw they didn’t even think twice about slaughtering all those refugees on the truck.
Who are The Regime?
We’re not told who the Regime are, but we do know that they’re ruthless and have seemingly mobilized across Europe. We can safely say they’re in France, Spain, Portugal and potentially Germany too. Otherwise, why else would Mia be leaving to get a boat all the way to Ireland? It’s also not outside the realm of possibility that they’re in the UK as well, given Ireland is their target destination.
There are a lot of survival-themed movies out there. Castaway is perhaps the most prolific, but recent contenders like Jungle, 127 Hours and even Everest see humanity tested and pushed to their absolute breaking point. Part of the appeal with these films comes from seeing that human spirit endure and make it through seemingly impossible odds to come out the other side unscathed. Or not, as the case may sometimes be.
Nowhere is the latest stab from Netflix at creating a survival-thriller, boasting a distinct post-apocalyptic Spanish flavour to boot. The story, set in a world ravaged by austerity, sees a pregnant woman called Mia escape from a cruel dictatorship in Spain with her boyfriend Nico onboard a shipping container bound for safer waters.
However, on the way Nico and Mia end up separated, with Mia forced to go it alone and survive on a shipping container all alone for as long as she can. Disaster inevitably strikes and with salvation seemingly miles away, Mia has seemingly insurmountable odds to survive. Except when deus ex machina calls of course.
For the first half of the movie, Nowhere actually sets its world up quite well. There’s some good mysteries rippling under the surface around Mia’s past, while the world itself is interesting and begging to be explored in more detail.
The second half however, takes a turn into silly waters. Mia suddenly becomes proficient in everything right off the bat. She can hunt, she can make nets, she can bend steel while also starving, and all of this, while never once having to contend with the real killer here – freezing water.
I’m not going to nit-pick but given the film is a survival thriller and spends almost all of its time battling water, hypothermia and freezing temperatures is only mentioned once, and that’s for Mia’s baby and not Mia herself.
The film constantly wants you to believe Mia is in danger, and to be fair, there are moments where she is. Unfortunately, the screenplay never dwells on these moments and aside from one hallucinatory moment and a couple of segments with her losing control, Mia is never fully tested to the limits. At one point, she rips her leg wide open on a rogue bit of rusty metal. However, she quickly stitches herself up and on she goes. There’s no infection, not much blood loss and the whole affair is never really mentioned again beyond a bit of hobbling about.
The film definitely has its moments but the second half in particular drags down the excellent set-up. We never really know whether Mia is really travelling to salvation, given the state of the world and the ambiguous ending to things. In fact, the ending just sort of…ends.
While Nowhere is fine by itself, when you compare it to other survival films, it pales by comparison. There are so many questions left unresolved and the survival elements will leave you questioning the believability of it all.
Can Mia really survive for days on end in freezing cold water by just wearing another jumper? Can she really bend steel using amazing strength after surviving on rationed bits of a baguette?
In the end, Nowhere is a pretty apt title for this film. Netflix’s post-apocalyptic survival thriller doesn’t really go anywhere. It drifts around in familiar waters for a while before delivering a pretty humdrum ending to proceedings. It’s certainly not a bad film though, and there are some stand-out moments for sure, but it’s also not a film you’ll be scrambling to return to anytime soon.
