Anyone who likes the sound of an apocalyptic musical starring Tilda Swinton will be delighted to hear of Joshua Oppenheimer’s The End, set several decades into the future and featuring a family trapped in a bunker due to climate change. The characters aren’t named beyond their familial roles: Michael Shannon plays Father, an oil executive keen to rewrite recent history to absolve himself of any blame, while Swinton plays Mother, obsessed with her collection of paintings. George MacKay plays Son, a diorama enthusiast who thirsts to escape the family unit. Son gets his chance to rebel when Girl (Moses Ingram) turns up unexpectedly . . .

The End is an outright musical, and MacKay admirably performs a lovely duet called ‘Alone’ with Bronagh Gallagher (Friend), but the songs become repetitious and an actual flatulence duet only adds to the sense of studied eccentricity. With only one ice-bound location, audiences may well share Son’s feeling that the walls are closing in over 158 minutes.

‘Different’ would be the polite way to describe this folly of a film, but it’s the absurd dialogue that proves fatal: ‘he does have quite the ding-dong on him!’ trills Swinton, a line only topped by her enquiring ‘never seen your mom covered in shit before?’ ‘Our whole world smelled of cinnamon and oranges’ is how the characters abstractly remember their idyllic past with any serious messaging about the dangers of climate change getting lost in a wilfully obscure production that sees top talent wasted on a decidedly oddball, pretentious vision.

The End is screened at GFT on Wednesday 5 March as part of Glasgow Film Festival, and goes on general release from Friday 28 March.