Coming home can either be something you look forward to or something you dread more than getting a root canal from a drunk endodontist. One thing everyone can agree on is that coming home, whether it is to a large city or a recently commercialized small town, requires copious amounts of alcoholic beverages to survive the visit. The World’s End is much like that visit home except of visiting relatives you’re visiting different bars, and instead of friends and family you run into robots and aliens. Yeah, drinking is encouraged.
The captain of our voyage is a middle-aged burnout named Gary King (Simon Pegg), whose sole ambition in life begins at a bar and ends at a similar place called The World’s End. At his high school peak, him and a group of his closest friends went on a 12 pub quest where they each had to drink a pint of beer at each place until reaching the end. For those of you trying to convert pints into liters, let’s just say its a lot of beer. So much it overwhelmed them the first time around, and like an angry specter, its continued to haunt him for the next 20 years. In a mid-life crisis fueled whim, he decides to get the old gang together. He visits each friend, lying to them saying that the other three are on board. He gets 3 of them to go along, but his fourth and former best friend Andy (Nick Frost) is hesitant because of some mysterious, past incident that happened between them. Reluctantly, they show not knowing what to expect, but nothing could prepare them for what is to come.
Once they arrive to town, they realize how much it has changed. Not only the town, but they have all changed, with the exception of Gary, who is worse than ever. Several pubs in, Gary realizes that something is off but its not until he pays a visit to the bathroom does he see how off things are. The thing that is the most off are people’s heads, which seem to pop off with out too much of a fight. Oh, and did I mention that they are attached to robots who are faster and stronger than your average human? Most of the people they knew have been replaced with robots, so to keep from raising suspicions, they must continue doing what there are doing and complete the pub crawl so they can escape. Easier said than done of course, especially when there are more nefarious forces at play.
This is the final film in Edgar Wright’s Cornetto trilogy, which is essentially a collection of various comedic disaster films. You may recall his previous films like Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz. This film ties up the trilogy perfectly. Not only does it excel in its comedy, but it also provides genuine emotions and real depth in dealing with more serious matters. Wright show us he can do a horror film, an action film, and finally a combination of the two with a large dose of sci-fi. Aliens, Automatons, and Alcohol… oh my! This is a sci-fi nerds wet dream. Wet because they spilled beer on themselves from all the laughing they did, of course.
If you are at all familiar with Wright’s directing/editing style, you’ll notice a lot of dramatic jump cuts with excellent sound mixing. If you don’t know what that means, essentially he likes to focus on several items and quickly moving on to the next one while adding in near-exaggerated sounds to heighten the experience. If you are still wondering, just check out the trailer below. That being said, his style has evolved since he did Shaun of the Dead. It’s more perfected and peppered with cinematically stout action sequences that are almost as beautifully choreographed as a rendition of black swan, except with more head smashing.
This films promises an end, and boy did it deliver a hell of an ending. Not only does it mark the end of the delicious Cornetto Trilogy, but it also marks the end of a lackluster summer film season, where they obviously saved the very best for last. Now that’s something that deserves to be drank to. Maybe 12 drinks in fact.
RATING: ★★★★★★★★★(9/10 stars)
Advertisement
Advertisement