Review of The World's End (2013) by Wayne_Posh — 25 Aug 2013

The World's End might sound more like a depressing disaster flick than a touching comedy-drama that explores the nuance of long-term friendships, but that is exactly what you get in this final installment of Edgar Wright's so-called Cornetto Trilogy. The film follows Simon Pegg's Gary King, along with his high school buddies, on his attempt to recapture his youth along a pub crawl destined to end at the titular World's End.

And the film starts out with that simple premise but allows itself to gain momentum to both scale to action-packed heights and descend to melodramatic valleys. Pegg sets off to his home town with his straight-laced buds (which includes an excellent Nick Frost and a perfectly uncomfortable Martin Freeman) to achieve the Golden Mile, a coveted 12 pint pub crawl. Once his doubtful friends begin to lose interest in following through with their weekend plans, all hell breaks loose as Pegg's King discovers that their boring childhood town has a disastrous secret behind its shiny veneer.

Wright's and Pegg's (and Frost's for that matter) penchant for movie tropes take center stage from here on out. The audience is treated to a combination of slapstick humor, sharp wit, beautifully choreographed hand-to-hand combat, horror movie suspense, and sci fi gloom and doom. All of this comes together to pinnacle not to a world-ending explosion, but to a thoughtful character revelation that brings two friends closer together than ever before (which nearly brought this reviewer to actual tears).

All in all, World's End comes close to recapturing the magic of Shaun of the Dead's first watch and reminds us of how awesome the shootouts were in Hot Fuzz but fizzles as a trilogy clincher. However, it does much to remind us that film CAN be fun without monstrous budgets or high-profile marketing campaigns.