The Road

You cannot get much bleaker than the post-apocalyptic winter of The Road, directed with an eye for barren landscapes and lost hope by John Hillcoat. His previous film The Proposition both established Hillcoat's name as a director to watch and also set the bar much to high for the gloomy The Road to match.
A man (Viggo Mortensen) embarks with his boy (Kodi Smit-McPhee) across the always overcast and mostly rainy desolation to an unspecified Coast. The disaster similarly never reveals its origins. Various incidents occur where man and boy must avoid roving marauders, discover hidden caches of food or confront other haggard denizens of the road. Occasional flashbacks show the breakup of the man's marriage as the woman (Charlize Theron) wanders off to commit suicide. Narratively the flashback's timeline is not clear but all those events must have taken place years ago, which makes man and boy's survival even more remarkable. The Road posits that the new garden of eden will contain no trees, snakes, apples or life but that Adam and Eve will merely persist.
The Road will not create waves due to its dour atmosphere but more serious viewers, plus fans of the book on which it's based, will soak up its story with the perspective it demands. Particular locations at places like Mount St. Helens give the film the unique sense its vision requires.