The World's End (2013)
Directed by Edgar Wright
Five friends who reunite in an attempt to top their epic pub crawl from 20 years earlier unwittingly become humankind's only hope for survival.
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Other touchstones include the fiction of John Wyndham (“Village of the Damned,” “The Day of the Triffids”), plus big dollops of “ Invasion of the Body Snatchers ” (both the 1956 and 1978 versions) and a bit of John Carpenter’s “The Thing,” plus many other references, even to chopsocky classics.
Key film references this time round include John Carpenter’s 1982 film The Thing and Bryan Forbes’ 1975 film The Stepford Wives .
Here, they riff on sci-fi, discreetly nodding to the likes of “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” or John Carpenter’s excellent genre works “The Thing” and “They Live.”
Other touchstones include the fiction of John Wyndham (“Village of the Damned,” “The Day of the Triffids”), plus big dollops of “ Invasion of the Body Snatchers ” (both the 1956 and 1978 versions) and a bit of John Carpenter’s “The Thing,” plus many other references, even to chopsocky classics.
Caught in a city populated by freaky robotlike denizens (with headlight eyes that recall both the three Snatchers films and the John Wyndham adaptation The Day of the Triffids), the boys see no other choice than to continue their bar-hopping until they can escape, though one suspects that Gary really is more interested in binge-drinking than in coming out alive.
Other touchstones include the fiction of John Wyndham (“Village of the Damned,” “The Day of the Triffids”), plus big dollops of “ Invasion of the Body Snatchers ” (both the 1956 and 1978 versions) and a bit of John Carpenter’s “The Thing,” plus many other references, even to chopsocky classics.
The big joke comes when the conventional, characterless home counties town they revisit is a British replica of the California township taken over by conformist aliens in Don Siegel's Invasion of the Body Snatchers .
Although it exhibits nowhere near the level of inspired deconstructionist comic sophistication of “Shaun of the Dead” or “Hot Fuzz,” the latest effort from the writing team of Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright has enough witty panache to compensate for its failings.
Five men pushing middle age go out drinking and get slaughtered, in some cases quite literally, in “The World’s End,” the latest highly enjoyable exercise in jaunty pastiche from writer-director Edgar Wright and writer-thesp Simon Pegg , the brains behind “ Shaun of the Dead ,” and “Hot Fuzz.”
In 2004's "Shaun of the Dead," Wright and company had fun with zombie movies (a genre that that still hasn't been buried, all these years and all these movies later).
Together with his co-writer and star Simon Pegg, he came up with the excellent “Shaun of the Dead” and “Hot Fuzz,” then (minus Pegg) delivered the excruciating big-screen video game/headache “Scott Pilgrim vs. the World.”
I successfully avoided knowing anything about "The World's End" outside of that Edgar Wright reteams with his "Shaun of the Dead" and "Hot Fuzz" stars Simon Pegg and Nick Frost in a comedy about middle-aged blokes who try to recreate the "pub crawl" they attempted in college.
This final installment of a British comic trilogy that started with 2004's Shaun of the Dead and 2007's Hot Fuzz reunites Simon Pegg, Nick Frost and director Edgar Wright.
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Like the other two movies, which paid homage to a specific genre (zombie and Hollywood action movies), The World’s End is a lot more than a Brit take on The Big Chill, although to reveal the craziness that erupts halfway through the movie would spoil the fun.
Even as it draws on obvious inspirations like The Big Chill and Invasion Of The Body Snatchers, it’s a fresh, personal statement from director/co-writer Edgar Wright and star/co-writer Simon Pegg.
Apart from a few funny lines (and a brilliant Madchester soundtrack) the movie is a total failure as a beery “The Big Chill.”
With “the World’s End,” Wright has stated that he watched “The Big Chill” and “It’s Always Fair Weather” in order to get in the mood for a reunion films.
It's kind of like The Big Chill, but without the heavy-handedness.
One minute it’s The Big Chill ; the next it’s Children of the Damned .
Other touchstones include the fiction of John Wyndham (“Village of the Damned,” “The Day of the Triffids”), plus big dollops of “ Invasion of the Body Snatchers ” (both the 1956 and 1978 versions) and a bit of John Carpenter’s “The Thing,” plus many other references, even to chopsocky classics.
“The World’s End” marks the final entry in the so-called Three Cornettos trilogy, Wright’s coy nod to Krzysztof Kieslowski’s “Three Colors” movies and the unofficial name for the series of genre-based buddy movies that started with “Shawn of the Dead” and continued with the Pegg-Frost cop-movie-meets-The-Wicker-Man comedy “Hot Fuzz.”
The third installment in Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg’s Cornetto trilogy—so named for the ice cream treat that makes a cameo in each episode—is a clever extension of the signature style the director and star/writing partners established with Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz, and an expansion on their themes of friendship, nostalgia and standing up to the Man.
Although it exhibits nowhere near the level of inspired deconstructionist comic sophistication of “Shaun of the Dead” or “Hot Fuzz,” the latest effort from the writing team of Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright has enough witty panache to compensate for its failings.
Hot Fuzz - much like filmmaker Edgar Wright's debut effort, Shaun of the Dead - possesses an uneven vibe that's generally easy enough to overlook, thanks mostly to Wright and star Simon Pegg's thoroughly irreverent screenplay and the inclusion of several enormously entertaining performances.
The third and weakest in the “Three Flavours Cornetto” trilogy of director-writer Edgar Wright, writer-star Simon Pegg, and costar Nick Frost, the movie’s conceptually dodgier than 2004’s “Shaun of the Dead” or 2007’s “Hot Fuzz,” juggling as it does an epic pub crawl, the middle-age crises of childhood pals... aaand an attack of alien cyborgs with viscous blue blood.
Sci-fi fantasies of the Body Snatchers ilk provide the inspiration for director Edgar Wright's latest spoof, after mining zombie horrors in Shaun of the Dead and action thrillers in Hot Fuzz.
The group's chemistry evokes the best sad-sack male bonding tales of Barry Levinson (" Diner ," " Tin Men "), and the performances are all superb, particularly Frost, who steals the film with an explosive physicality that's John Goodmanesque.
But he never said we couldn't call it Invasion of the Body Snatchers meets Diner, so there you go.
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The group's chemistry evokes the best sad-sack male bonding tales of Barry Levinson (" Diner ," " Tin Men "), and the performances are all superb, particularly Frost, who steals the film with an explosive physicality that's John Goodmanesque.
Key film references this time round include John Carpenter’s 1982 film The Thing and Bryan Forbes’ 1975 film The Stepford Wives .