How It Ends (2018)
January 23, 2019 12:36 PM - Subscribe
After a mysterious apocalyptic event turns the Western half of the US into chaos, a man teams up with his pregnant fiance's disapproving father to head west and save her.
I found out how How It Ends ends from Wikipedia, because how it began was so dour and unremarkable that I couldn't bring myself to keep going.
the doubling of the words How and Ends kept me from processing that sentence for far too long - i was over here wondering if you just trawl wiki descriptions of movies and then fight through the end of them when they begin in dour and unremarkable fashions . . .
relatedly, is there a word for movies so bad the right choice is to have them voluntarily spoiled?
posted by Exceptional_Hubris at 12:58 PM on January 23, 2019
the doubling of the words How and Ends kept me from processing that sentence for far too long - i was over here wondering if you just trawl wiki descriptions of movies and then fight through the end of them when they begin in dour and unremarkable fashions . . .
relatedly, is there a word for movies so bad the right choice is to have them voluntarily spoiled?
posted by Exceptional_Hubris at 12:58 PM on January 23, 2019
netflix has tried to get me to watch this for a while, now. every now and then i'm tempted, but it sounds like i ain't missing much?
posted by entropone at 1:00 PM on January 23, 2019
posted by entropone at 1:00 PM on January 23, 2019
I really appreciate you going through all these streaming service apocalypse movies and reporting back your thoughts, DirtyOldTown.
posted by tobascodagama at 1:39 PM on January 23, 2019 [2 favorites]
posted by tobascodagama at 1:39 PM on January 23, 2019 [2 favorites]
I really appreciate you going through all these streaming service apocalypse movies and reporting back your thoughts, DirtyOldTown.
I have to have something to keep busy between job interviews. Right now, I am taking a break from the apocalypse to watch Noomi Rapace shoot and punch people in Close. Basically, it's like mid/lower tier Liam Neeson actioners, but with Rapace. This is a pleasant substitution, even if the end product is no mare remarkable.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 1:42 PM on January 23, 2019 [7 favorites]
Yeah, given the cast and the concept it feels like this should have been more tense and with more complex character development. But it was just kind of flat.
posted by soundguy99 at 2:30 PM on January 23, 2019 [2 favorites]
posted by soundguy99 at 2:30 PM on January 23, 2019 [2 favorites]
The closing sequence is pretty cool though! Maybe that's where all the money went...
posted by orrnyereg at 2:55 PM on January 23, 2019
posted by orrnyereg at 2:55 PM on January 23, 2019
I thought this one was okay, mostly on the strength of 'I enjoy watching Forest Whitaker do his thing,' but I was disappointed in the ambiguous ending - I feel like this one would've benefited from some closure, even in the form of everybody dying or the like.
posted by mordax at 8:50 PM on January 23, 2019 [1 favorite]
posted by mordax at 8:50 PM on January 23, 2019 [1 favorite]
I watched this one and got to the end and was like "Meh." Netflix kept pushing it on me and finally gave in as sometimes they do suggest great stuff.
This was not one of those occasions.
posted by miss-lapin at 9:11 PM on January 23, 2019
This was not one of those occasions.
posted by miss-lapin at 9:11 PM on January 23, 2019
I did not hate this movie nearly as much as I gather I was supposed to.
Is that sufficiently faint praise?
Yes the ending, the whole third act really, was a mess. And yes a few things don't make any sense if you think too long about them, but that's true of most apocalypse movies. But I actually didn't mind that they didn't explain what the hell was going on, or that loose ends were dangling all over the place and never getting tied off. That seemed appropriate to the genre.
That said, it's not a great movie by any means. Allow me to recommend a much better movie about two guys who don't like each other very much teaming up to reach a distant loved one while the world collapses around them, leading to an unlikely conclusion. The Last Days (Los Ultimos Dios), in which the apocalypse is that nobody can go outside without dropping dead on the spot in an agorophobic panic attack. It's sort of like this, but a lot better.
posted by Naberius at 8:15 AM on January 24, 2019 [3 favorites]
Is that sufficiently faint praise?
Yes the ending, the whole third act really, was a mess. And yes a few things don't make any sense if you think too long about them, but that's true of most apocalypse movies. But I actually didn't mind that they didn't explain what the hell was going on, or that loose ends were dangling all over the place and never getting tied off. That seemed appropriate to the genre.
That said, it's not a great movie by any means. Allow me to recommend a much better movie about two guys who don't like each other very much teaming up to reach a distant loved one while the world collapses around them, leading to an unlikely conclusion. The Last Days (Los Ultimos Dios), in which the apocalypse is that nobody can go outside without dropping dead on the spot in an agorophobic panic attack. It's sort of like this, but a lot better.
posted by Naberius at 8:15 AM on January 24, 2019 [3 favorites]
this movie was so disappointing and the ending was just dumb.
posted by supermedusa at 10:27 AM on January 24, 2019
posted by supermedusa at 10:27 AM on January 24, 2019
My blurb review I posted elsewhere:
How It Ends is, it ends with just sort of stopping and rolling credits. We've got a bland dude who flies out to Chicago from Seattle to be nervous at his intended fiancee's ex-military father because he wants his blessing to ask for her hand, and also she's pregnant because you may as well ladle on the tropes if you're the kind of writer who thinks women are mostly useful as Distress Objects to provide motivation. While out there, an ill-defined coastal apocalypse happens while on the phone with her, natch, and then all flights are promptly grounded and the power goes out everywhere.
Society promptly turns into The Road after about two days (seriously, the movie takes pains to provide a Day N counter caption on Bland Dude's Manly Journey), as Hero McBland and Forest Whitaker Slumming It Tough Dad embark on road trip to Go Rescue The Girl through the one and only military roadblock in the entire continental US, promptly get in gun- and car-fights because again, total societal collapse in less than 48 hours, and Blandy boringly metamorphizes into grizzled toughguy bland instead of nebbish whitecollar bland. Also, they're constantly lost on the road trip because even though tough guy military dad has a Go Bag all ready to go etc., no one has a paper road atlas, presumably because the writer of this joint had vaguely heard of Go Bags being all preparedness tactical and tough and shit, but probably didn't know what a road atlas was.
Anyway, it's not very good, but neither is it particularly bad. It is a good testament to FX in general being more and more affordable these days. It probably deserves a location in a passing footnote reference in some future academic paper about the kind of inadvertently hilarious post-apocalyptic fiction that assumes people immediately go full savage if the power's out for more than 12 hours.
posted by Drastic at 8:23 AM on January 25, 2019 [4 favorites]
How It Ends is, it ends with just sort of stopping and rolling credits. We've got a bland dude who flies out to Chicago from Seattle to be nervous at his intended fiancee's ex-military father because he wants his blessing to ask for her hand, and also she's pregnant because you may as well ladle on the tropes if you're the kind of writer who thinks women are mostly useful as Distress Objects to provide motivation. While out there, an ill-defined coastal apocalypse happens while on the phone with her, natch, and then all flights are promptly grounded and the power goes out everywhere.
Society promptly turns into The Road after about two days (seriously, the movie takes pains to provide a Day N counter caption on Bland Dude's Manly Journey), as Hero McBland and Forest Whitaker Slumming It Tough Dad embark on road trip to Go Rescue The Girl through the one and only military roadblock in the entire continental US, promptly get in gun- and car-fights because again, total societal collapse in less than 48 hours, and Blandy boringly metamorphizes into grizzled toughguy bland instead of nebbish whitecollar bland. Also, they're constantly lost on the road trip because even though tough guy military dad has a Go Bag all ready to go etc., no one has a paper road atlas, presumably because the writer of this joint had vaguely heard of Go Bags being all preparedness tactical and tough and shit, but probably didn't know what a road atlas was.
Anyway, it's not very good, but neither is it particularly bad. It is a good testament to FX in general being more and more affordable these days. It probably deserves a location in a passing footnote reference in some future academic paper about the kind of inadvertently hilarious post-apocalyptic fiction that assumes people immediately go full savage if the power's out for more than 12 hours.
posted by Drastic at 8:23 AM on January 25, 2019 [4 favorites]
The Last Days (Los Ultimos Dios) yt , in which the apocalypse is that nobody can go outside without dropping dead on the spot in an agorophobic panic attack. It's sort of like this, but a lot better.
The Last Days was pretty fun, although I never would've considered them similar since the apocalypse there doesn't involve any pyrotechnics. I definitely second the recommendation.
posted by mordax at 10:12 AM on January 25, 2019 [2 favorites]
The Last Days was pretty fun, although I never would've considered them similar since the apocalypse there doesn't involve any pyrotechnics. I definitely second the recommendation.
posted by mordax at 10:12 AM on January 25, 2019 [2 favorites]
I found both the main character and the movie to be insufferably bland.
posted by Dip Flash at 6:26 AM on January 26, 2019
posted by Dip Flash at 6:26 AM on January 26, 2019
My brother and I watched this movie the other night, and it provided a few hours of enjoyment, most of them spent discussing how terrible and nonsensical it was in nearly every respect.
posted by the turtle's teeth at 8:29 AM on January 26, 2019
posted by the turtle's teeth at 8:29 AM on January 26, 2019
I enjoy nonsense movie like this, but the ending is so bad! I came here just to figure out if I'd missed the point and brilliant mefites would fill me in.
Plus, if this were a series, I'd have assumed one actor's contact negotiations didn't go well.
posted by moshjosh at 6:29 PM on February 15, 2019
Plus, if this were a series, I'd have assumed one actor's contact negotiations didn't go well.
posted by moshjosh at 6:29 PM on February 15, 2019
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You know what's worse than the apocalypse? The apocalypse as spent with your asshole future father-in-law.
There is no humor or excitement in this film, just a fight for survival made personally grating by interpersonal conflict.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 12:38 PM on January 23, 2019 [4 favorites]