Some (unspecified) disaster has wiped out most life on Earth. Trees are dead and gone, most humans, essentially all other animal life. Grasses and things seem to be OK.
In this lovely world The Man and The Boy, father and son, are travelling to find the sea and their last hope.
And, in essence, that's the movie. Therein lie its strength and its flaws. It's a character study of the two leads, with their occasional interactions with other survivors.
It could be a story of human hope in the face of adversity and the grim reality leaching that hope from The Man even as he tries to keep it alive in his son. I think that's what it's meant to be. The trouble is, this is also a world in which cannibalism is rife. It is a world in which a mother decides her best gift to her son and husband is to walk out into the blizzard dressed only in a T-shirt so there will be two bullets left when the right time comes. It is a world in which, despite his son's distress, The Man teaches his son the best way to commit suicide with a pistol.
However, because the plot and the level of activity are low, non-existent isn't quite fair but close, there's plenty of time left for you wonder. What disaster kills trees and animals globally but leaves enough humans alive enough years later that the story can work? Since the world is this grim, why are you inflicting this dragging, slow, death by starvation in a world that is actually going to be without humans soon enough; the wife/mother character is actually making the sane choice for the world they live in.
And that's a shame. It had the feel of good, if slow, movie trying to get out but the world was just so bleak, so hopeless that I came away feeling "Why did they bother?" And that seems a suitable note on which to end - Why did we bother going to see it?
