Forever’s End is a small, quiet movie about the end of the world. Sarah (Charity Farrell) is a teenage girl who has spent the last six years completely alone, after everyone around her—and for all she knows, everyone on the planet—was killed by some great, unnamed cataclysm. Then, out of nowhere, her sister Lily (Lili Reinhart) shows up on her doorstep, without a word as to where she’s been all this time, or what’s happened to her. A few days later, a young man calling himself Ryan (Warren Bryson) shows up as well. And, slowly, it becomes apparent that maybe the world isn’t as empty and desolate as they thought.

The movie is beautifully shot, and, without any of the traditional charred remains of ruined, abandoned cities, really does a good job of conveying the emptiness and loneliness of this post-apocalyptic world. The music is great, too, and so is the acting. Farrell and Reinhart have good chemistry and talk and fight like real sisters.

The script, on the other hand, is less praiseworthy. Without going into too much detail, it descends into a series of twists during the last quarter or so of the film, which end up cheapening the beautiful tone set by everything before it. The first twist is visible from a mile away. Maybe it’s supposed to be, but knowing what’s coming kind of distracts the viewer from what’s happening on the screen now.

The other twists are less obvious, and, in all fairness, they do seem fairly well planned and thought out in terms of how they connect with the rest of the film. Particularly after hearing the writer/director’s thoughts on the movie, it’s evident what he was going for, and the overall story he was trying to convey.

But, even so, it’s hard not to feel cheated. Rather than twisting the audience all around, it would have been much better for the director simply to tell the story he wanted to tell in a straightforward manner. Done in the same small, quiet, lonely way as the beginning of the movie, it could have been something really beautiful.