This Is The End

The apocalypse is proving to be a somewhat popular theme to explore in film and tv over the last couple of years. Zombies are largely taking responsibility for the trend, but disaster movies like The Day After Tomorrow, Knowing and The Happening are showing that there's big money to be made from the whole "what if everything went catastrophically wrong" scenario. Granted, each of those last three mentioned are indescribably terrible films, but still...people went to see them. So I guess it was only time for someone to step up and make a good comedy addition to the genre, and that man was Seth Rogen (and writing partner Evan Goldberg, naturally). Rogen's career has hit a minor lull thanks to efforts such as The Green Hornet shaking his previously untouchable reputation for producing genuinely funny and original comedies, so now to find out if he could pull it back with his take on the end of days; This Is The End.

So here's the basic idea: we're watching a film wherein all of the actors are playing exaggerated version of themselves, and they're all attending the housewarming party of James Franco. Seth Rogen reuintes with his friend Jay Barouchel and takes him to the party, despite the hesitance of the latter. The party is awash with famous faces of American comedy, including Craig Robinson, Michael Cera, Aziz Ansari, Jonah Hill, Jason Segel and Christopher Mintz-Plasse, not to mention a showing from Rihanna. Once Barouchel decides to go out for cigarettes as an excuse for his feeling uncomfortable at the party, Rogen accompanies him to a convenience stores, just as the apocalypse kicks into life. People are "raptured" by beams of blue light, earthquakes shake Hollywood, and havoc breaks out on the streets. Returning to the party, Rogen and Barouchel find the guests blissfully unaware until a further quake claims the lives of several of the guests, leaving Franco, Rogen, Barouchel, Robinson, Hill and McBride as the survivors, sheltering in Franco's house. They must spend the rest of the movie attempting to survive what appears to be armageddon with limited food, water and a continuously strained group relationship.

The idea is a clever one in two ways. First: whilst this kind of story has been explored previously, from films/novels ranging as widely as End Of Days and I Am Legend, it has never particularly been explored successfully in a comedy format. Second: the casting is eye-catching. The majority of the actors were involved in either/both Freaks & Geeks or Pineapple Express, two of Rogen's most critically successful ventures so far. Furthermore, almost everyone in the film has appeared in a series of movies with a cult following (see Cera in Scott Pilgrim vs The World, for example), so the film pretty much guarantees it's immediate audience on cast alone. The majority of the actors provide excellent performances as themselves, as cameos or otherwise, even if Robinson and Danny McBride are essentially playing the same characters they've ever played in everything they've ever been in. Franco does a good job of making us wonder whether he actually is a slightly unhinged acting snob, longing for the closeness of his oldest friends in the business, and Hill is very funny as a cringeworthy, camper vision of himself. But it is still Rogen who steals the show here, even if he is also just playing himself. Rogen has a way of tapping into comedy, or at least to my tastes. He's constantly chortling away, making obscene jokes and just being the person you wish you knew in the real world, he immediately disarms you allowing you to appreciate the humour of the scenes he's in. But enough of my imaginary bromance with Mr. Rogen.

As the film goes on, it has some genuinely hilarious moments, whether that's seeing the various deaths of the party guests, the already infamous Emma Watson cameo or the group fighting off boredom through the filming of a Pineapple Express sequel in the house. It's never particularly intelligent, and rarely catches you by surprise, this film is a Rogen standard: friends ripping on each other; however, the twist on this one is obviously that hellfire is raining down on the planet at the same time. This simply means that the film can get away with the slightly more ridiculous, so high school anxiety is instead replaced with demons, cannibals and Satan. As you do.

Unfortunately, this only gets the film so far, as it has a storyline to try and tie up, and it rushes the process slightly. A lot of time is spent on the set up, and one or two comedy bits in the middle, and less on the actual climax of the film, which takes place in less than ten minutes of screentime. What's more, the ending seems to get sucked into a slightly sappy conclusion, albeit with a guy-love theme, rather than a full on love story. Though I will admit, the final scene of the movie, which I definitely will not ruin, might go down as one of my favourite (and most certainly the one of the most random) finales of any I have ever seen, and, no joking, genuinely made happy.

3/5 - Extremely funny in places,but a little stretched and forced in others. However, it marks a solid return to form for Rogen, and has apparently made me realise that I could end up being his stalker until I get to share a beer with him. Which is completely normal.

World War Z

The zombie genre has had somewhat of a reinvention since the turn of the millennium. Largely gone are the days of the shuffling, shambling corpses of the George A. Romero style, in are the chaotic, rage-driven....corpses...of the virus age. Films like 28 Days Later and series The Walking Dead have switched the focus of zombie survival from a short term "how do we survive the night" to "how do we fix this...and how do we survive the night". So when talk of Max Brooks' collection of survival accounts was first rumoured to hit to the big screen, I'm sure I wasn't alone in being just a little excited at the thought of World War Z.

In many ways, World War Z follows what has become the standard of zombie plot lines recently: man seems to be running normal life, man's home/city/country is the victim of a zombie outbreak, man survives, outbreak threatens to bring down society as we know it. However, instead of spending the rest of his life trying to merely survive, this time our hero calls upon his experience as a U.N. investigator to hunt out a solution to the pandemic, travelling around the globe to gather information vital to the survival of the human race.

Our hero in this instance, happens to be Brad Pitt, who plays Gerry Lane, the aforementioned ex-U.N. investigator, now fully fledged family man. You know you're always going to get a solid performance from Pitt, and this is no difference; he brings his usual easiness to the action-filled zombie apocalypse, with the added softness required for a man who knows he's doing his duty with his family in mind, a reluctant, yet stoic hero indeed. And while it's not unfair to say that Pitt really is the star of the film, his supporting cast help the story along well, albeit it in fleeting appearances. Daniella Kertesz fills a pleasing role as Israeli soldier Segen, who essentially becomes Lane's sidekick, a skull-busting, bite-risking amazonian of a woman, who you get the impression could survive the end of days all on her own. Pierfrancesco Favino takes on the part of a World Health Organization researcher who also takes on a reluctant hero role in the film, and gives a convincing performance as a man brought to the very bottom by the world crumbling around him. Oh, and there's a bizarre yet very much enjoyable turn up for The Thick Of It star, Peter Capaldi, as another WHO researcher, just to throw you off a little.

The CGI is, unfortunately, something of a love-hate feature of this film. When we get up close and personal with the zombies, they're fairly impressive, and at the very least menacing. The citywide scenes of destruction are something to behold as well, and successfully fill the audience with a sense of menace and dread at just how quickly the outbreak takes hold of civilisation. However, I found the scenes involving the zombies as a hoard to be extremely disappointing. Whilst impressed at the scale with which the undead maraud their way through a city, the speed of them is simply flat out unbelievable. And I say that knowing full well that this is a film wherein the dead are rising up and eating people. They are jerky, they are fast, but simply too fast to be taken seriously. It reminded me sadly of the 2008 inspired by/remake of Day Of The Dead, wherein the zombies would inexplicably speed up, as if someone had just pressed 'fast-foward', and looked utterly ridiculous. Now I get that we are supposed to be looking at this as a way of saying that this virus breaks us down into something not human, something totally animal and something of near hive mind; but instead of making a clear social statement, the use of over-the-top CGI leaves you looking at the film unable to immerse yourself in the situation. The tension is so much more effective when in close quarters with the zombies, which, unfortunately, does not happen often enough.

I may be being harsh here, as, after all, this is a film about the bigger picture of a zombie outbreak, and is rumoured to be only the first of perhaps three films, but it leaves us a little confused. There are a few close call scenes with a not-so-vast amount of zombies, and those work very well. But then again, there are full on sieges of hoards taking cities, and whilst the point is there, it gets somewhat lost as it all happens a little too quickly. Again, this could be a point director Marc Forster was trying to get across (just how rapid the outbreak takes hold), but with a confused swapping between bigger battles and frantic one-on-one moments, we never really know how to feel. Ultimately, I truly hope the ambiguous ending of the film is simply a bridge to a sequel, as I feel this has serious potential, however, as a stand-alone effort, I couldn't help feeling disappointed when the conclusion arrived.

3/5 - It had it's moments, and was enjoyable, without being particularly engaging. It's difficult to get close to the benchmark met by either 28 Days Later or The Walking Dead when it comes to the big scale zombie ponderer, and even more so to get anywhere near the Romero standard of immediate danger, but this film had some way to go. I'm a huge fan of the novel, and I really do hope more is made in any sequels, preferably by following the model of survival accounts from around the world, as opposed to one man saving the world.

P.S.

The product placement is pretty hilarious.