Summary
Blake and Daniel go to his workplace and she waits in the lobby for him to finish his meeting. She says hello to a man her age sitting in a suit. The scene cuts to Dr. Hayes meeting with the same reporter who was in Ray’s helicopter. She asks why no one saw it coming in Nevada. He says they didn’t know there were any fault lines out there. Hayes says that, as of yesterday, he believes scientists can now predict earthquakes. Just then his students come in with news of activity along the San Andreas fault. Hayes follows a line on a map tracing the boundary of the fault up to the Hoover Dam. He realizes that what happened the day before wasn’t an anomaly but an indicator of the whole San Andreas fault going off. His student asks who they should call. He says, “Everybody.”
Back in the building lobby, the young man in the suit spills coffee on himself. Blake gives him a napkin, then introduces herself. He is flustered and says his name is Blake, but then corrects and says it’s Ben. He says he is interviewing for a job at the company, which is the place to be if you’re an architect. Ben’s little brother Ollie walks up and sits down, commenting on Blake’s beauty. Ollie asks for Blake’s phone number on his brother’s behalf, embarrassing Ben. Ben is called up for his interview. Ollie excitedly tells Blake about their travel plans in San Francisco.
Emma is at lunch at a top-floor restaurant in downtown Los Angeles with Susan, a woman who bluntly asks about her other daughter drowning in an accident. Just then Ray, in his helicopter, calls Emma. She leaves the table. Ray apologizes for his behavior the day before and says he wasn’t ready to hear Blake and Emma were moving in with someone else. The cutlery on the table shakes and Emma panics. Ray tells her to get to the roof with as many people as she can. Back in Hayes’s office, the shaking sends everyone under desks.
In San Francisco, Daniel finishes his meeting. Blake gives Ollie her phone number for Ben. In the car, as they leave the parking garage, the shaking starts. Daniel tells his driver to get them out of there. Beams and concrete fall and the road collapses. The car is trapped under concrete chunks and rubble. The driver dies and Blake, sitting behind him, is trapped in the seat. Daniel says he’s going to get her out of there.
Outside the car, however, he looks at the concrete pinning her. He sees the exit and says he’s going for help. Blake pleads with him not to leave her alone but he goes. He finds a security guard to ask for help, but the man is crushed by a falling piece of ceiling. In shock, he gets to his feet and leaves the building, leaving Blake. However, Ben and his brother saw him ask the guard for help. Ben says Blake’s name and looks at the stairs.
Ray flies his helicopter over Los Angeles as the glass shatters in skyscraper windows. Emma opens a door in the top-floor restaurant and sees people falling to the ground. She staggers out, seeing the chef engulfed in flames. She brings the screaming people to the roof. However, everyone walks down the exit stairs instead of following her up.
On the roof, Emma is alone as the ground cracks and floors collapse. She falls with the floors, becoming bloody and dusty. The shaking stops but she is surrounded by broken slabs of concrete and rebar. She crawls up as Ray approaches in his helicopter. Just when they make eye contact and it seems safe, an explosion brings more fire to the roof, and Ray can’t get close in the helicopter.
Emma moves to another part of the roof as Ray makes the helicopter hover. He lowers a rope to his ex-wife. A massive building falls over next to them. Emma runs to escape the moving wall of dust and debris. Ray pulls the rope to see that she is clinging to the bottom of the rescue basket. Inside the helicopter, he asks if she is hurt. She says she isn’t. They get in the cockpit and fly up as more buildings collapse, sending the helicopter into a tailspin. The world goes topsy-turvy as they navigate away from the destruction into a smoky sky. Emma and Ray breathe in relief. Ray puts his hand on hers.
The scene cuts to the parking garage where Blake is trapped. She yells for help. She reaches her purse with difficulty and calls her father. She tells him in a panic about her situation, but her cell service cuts out. Ray tells Emma that there’s no way rescue services will dig in parking garages soon. He says they’re going to get their daughter. Meanwhile, Ben and Ollie find Blake as another concrete beam falls on top of the car.
They attempt to pry the beam off the roof using rebar pieces for leverage. She tells them to get out before the building collapses. Ben says there’s not a chance in hell they’re leaving her in there. Ben uses a tire jack to lift the beam, but it only raises it half a foot. He then stabs the car’s tires to flatten them and get more room. Just as the car roof collapses, Ollie and Ben pull her to safety.
Analysis
Peyton further develops the themes of grief, responsibility, ingenuity, and natural disasters with Dr. Hayes’s interview about the Hoover Dam collapse. Although he is actively grieving the recent death of his colleague Dr. Park, Hayes considers it his responsibility as a scientist to make a public statement about the ingenious early warning technology he and Park have been developing. While in reality no scientists have been able to predict an earthquake, in the world of the film, Dr. Hayes has made a revolutionary breakthrough.
In an instance of situational irony, Dr. Hayes’s interview is interrupted by new findings borne out by the technology he is discussing. In the world of the film, it turns out the fault lines he detected in Nevada are actually connected to the larger San Andreas Fault. Because of this connection, Dr. Hayes concludes that what happened in Nevada wasn’t a one-off incident but the evidence of more catastrophic earthquakes to come as the built-up pressure between the Pacific Plate and North American Plate releases.
Just as Hayes predicts, a major earthquake strikes California. Coincidentally, Ray is on the phone with Emma in Los Angeles when the shaking begins. Peyton immerses the viewer in the chaos of the natural disaster by making the camera move quickly through the screaming crowd of diners. The disorienting camera work emulates Emma’s confusion as she moves through the top-floor restaurant—a calm, elegant space that has suddenly become a living hell—in search of an exit. Luckily for Emma, Ray reaches the destroyed building in time for him to pull her into the helicopter.
Meanwhile, the same earthquake strikes further north along the San Andreas Fault, trapping Blake and Daniel in the parkade of Daniel’s office building. The themes of rescue and responsibility arise when Daniel abandons Blake in his car and staggers out of the building. Luckily for Blake, Ben and Ollie overhear Daniel mention a woman being trapped, and they show their sense of responsibility toward others by doing the opposite of what Daniel did and running deeper into the crumbling building to save Blake.
With the Taylor brothers’ rescue of Blake, Peyton builds on the theme of cooperation. To lift the concrete beam pinning Blake’s legs under the driver’s seat, Blake, Ben and Ollie must work together to figure out a solution. In the end, Blake survives because of a combination of cooperation and Ben’s ingenuity as he uses a carjack to get more leverage on the beam and to stab the tires to make the gap even wider.
