With a premise that invariably recalls the various screen incarnations of Richard Matheson's novel I Am Legend, Geoff Murphy's The Quiet Earth (originally released in New Zealand in 1985) also concerns the unraveling routines of a single human living among the suddenly abandoned remains of society, but it follows its doomsday logic to a place more cerebral and chilling than the ever-present menace of night-walking zombies. The title says it all, and that very absence of noise is what makes the planet inherited by government scientist Zac Hobson (Bruno Lawrence), a gruff pragmatist, so unsettling. As with the hero in the Matheson adaptations, Hobson has ties to the "effect" that seems to have wiped out everyone but him, and the details reveal themselves in a way that's eerie and satisfying, even when relying on relatively flimsy science fiction. He addresses the first hours of his isolation with almost a comic stoicism and unwillingness to panic, as though it were a short-term nuisance needing to be resolved. But as he begins to indulge in his unchecked id -- driving oversized construction equipment into buildings, for example -- it taps into that universal question of how we ourselves would disengage from our learned behaviors in the same setting. And Lawrence carries off this gradual descent with fearless naturalism. Of course, that's just the opening act of what becomes an exercise in precarious social dynamics, made all the more intense by the sparse size of the cast. Blissfully unspoiled by Hollywood over-thinking, The Quiet Earth is a cult treasure for those who prefer intelligence to pyrotechnics in their visions of the apocalypse.