A Murder at the End of the World was filmed across several locations, perfectly setting the scene for the murder mystery series.
Emma Corrin is bringing a new kind of detective to the murder mystery genre, in the form of Darby Hart - if you're looking for what to watch ideas this month, put Darby and the cast of A Murder At the End of the World at the top of your list. An amateur sleuth and seasoned hacker, Darby is invited by a reclusive billionaire to take part in a retreat, along with eight other guests. When one of the guests is found dead, Darby takes the helm in an attempt to prove it was murder, before anyone else dies.
The series was shot across some dazzling - and cold - locations, leaving viewers asking where exactly it was filmed. In the same way we've recently looked into where Apple TV+ historical romp The Buccaneers was filmed, and revealed where to find the stunning locations seen in Netflix's All The Light We Cannot See, we are doing the same for A Murder At the End of the World. Read on for everything we've uncovered about the locations featured in the series.
Where was A Murder At the End of the World filmed?
A Murder At the End of the World was filmed in Iceland, New Jersey, and Utah.
In New Jersey, filming is said to have taken place in Kearny, and Reddington River Buffalo Farm. Interior shots for Andy's hotel were also filmed at a sound stage in the state. According to Variety, Iceland was selected as a filming location due to its low covid rates at the time. However, series creator Brit Marling not only caught the virus during the shoot, but also got hypothermia.
Writing on Instagram about filming in Iceland, Marling wrote "It’s taken us 3 1/2 years to tell our next story from script to screen and it was a wild ride. I got hypothermia. Then covid. Twice. There were dust storms, blizzards, and 40 mph wind gusts sent our 4k lights rolling down the mountains."
Of the collection of pictures, she added a detail about exactly where the crew had looked for their Icelandic location, adding "scaled up a hillside to take this pic of our crew on our first scout - the glacier of SVÍNAFELLSJÖKULL."
Speaking about why Utah was then chosen as a filming location, co creator Zal Batmanglij said, "Our shoot began in Iceland. And then we end in Utah six months later. And one of the actors said to me, ‘Oh my God, do you notice the similarities with Iceland?'" He explained that the similarities were intentional and had been worked out in advance of the shoot, in the years he and Marling had spent developing the series.
Marling again took to Instagram to commemorate finishing filming the show, originally titled Retreat. Sharing a collection of photos from the cast and crew's escapades, she captioned the snaps "Day 6 snow storms… Day 86 dust storms… Today is day 94 and our final day of shooting RETREAT..."
Where does Murder At the End of the World take place?
As well as being filmed in Iceland, a large part of the action in the story is also set in Iceland.
Andy, the billionaire who has set up the retreat Darby attends, puts his guests up in his remote Icelandic hotel. Darby is one of six genius minds invited to the event, in which Andy intends to find a solution to the climate crisis.
Speaking to Vanity Fair, Brit Marling said of the setting "We were thinking a lot about how the story would move between these frozen tundras of Iceland and these open desertscapes of the American West."
She added "We kept thinking about going back and forth between those worlds. They’re so disparate, and yet they’re both places animated by wind. The feeling of wind is this current of time in the story. It’s the winds across Iceland that keep bringing us into the past, and then the desert winds bring us back into the winds of Iceland."
A Murder At the End of the World: Cast
- Emma Corrin (The Crown, My Policeman) as Darby Hart
- Brit Marling (Babylon, The OA) as Lee
- Clive Owen (The Informer, The Knick) as Andy Ronson
- Harris Dickinson (The King's Men, Where The Crawdads Sing) as Bill Farrah
- Alice Braga (The Suicide Squad, Hypnotic) as Sian
- Jermaine Fowler (Am I OK? The Blackening) as Martin
- Joan Chen (Marco Polo, Twin Peaks) as Lu Mei
- Raúl Esparza (Dopesick, Candy) as David
- Edoardo Ballerini (Ripper Street, Elementary) as Ray
- Pegah Ferydoni (SOKO Hamburg) as Ziba
- Ryan J. Haddad (Foul Play, The Politician) as Oliver
- Javed Khan (The Capture, Everything I Know About Love) as Rohan
A Murder At the End of the World: Reviews
Early critical reviews suggest A Murder At the End of the World is definitely one to watch this autumn.
Judy Berman from TIME referred to the drama as "smart" and "stylish," saying "Marling and Batmanglij have so thoughtfully built an inquiry into the consequences of AI and surveillance capitalism within the framework of a whodunit, yielding a mystery both current and timeless."
Suggesting viewers would be in for a "twisty slay ride," Matthew Gilbert from the Boston Globe was also impressed. He said "It’s worlds away from the coziness of Christie-styled whodunits. While the mystery plot is solid, and the red herrings work for the most part, and the action sequences are compelling, they’re all wound tightly into broader questions."
Rory Doherty from Paste was equally impressed, offering the series 8/10. He suggested the show to be a "Genre-soaked meditation on digital-age passion and pain that meshes character drama with stylish, thoughtful thrills."
For more on filming locations, we took a look at where Lenny Henry's Three Little Birds filmed, and the Northern areas standing in for London in Netflix's genre-bending Bodies. Fellow Netflix series Everything Now filmed actually in London, and we also took a look at where.
