How it Ends (2018)

(Netflix Streaming, December 2019) The post-apocalyptic road trip is a surprisingly long-lived tradition in American fiction (especially written), helped by the vast expanses of the continental United States highway system and a built-in dramatic device in motivating the trip across dangerous distances. At its best, How it Ends clearly exploits this tradition, heightening its drama with two lead characters united by a thin single thread and giving us a few disaster-filled thrills along the way. Despite the film’s modest budget and consequent limitations, director David M. Rosenthal throws in a few effective visuals here and there, and the growing suspense of knowing whether the bickering characters will achieve their goal (even on a quest more likely to be quixotic than reasonable) is familiar but effective. Forest Whitaker adds a lot of gravitas to the quest, while Theo James eventually develops into a likable character. Roughly two thirds of the way in How it Ends, I even started thinking that this was quite enjoyable in its chosen genre, despite several annoying flaws and dumb decisions along the way. The inclusion of a Native American character (Grace Dove, perhaps the best thing about the film) felt like a solid decision, the episodic structure of the film still felt fresh and the mystery of the catastrophe having struck America was still unfolding. Then the last act rolled in and the film nosedived. (There will be spoilers for the rest of this review because you can’t talk about what’s wrong with the film without digging into it.)  I wasn’t really expecting the film to offer a definitive explanation about its catastrophe—obviously inspired by The Road except far from being as meaningful, How it Ends just throws too many things on-screen to make sense and I would have been satisfied with a trite “Aliens!”—but this is the least of the film’s problems. Not only does it jettison a likable character two thirds of the way through, it introduces a new character fifteen minutes after the resolution of the main quest narrative and fifteen minutes before the actual end of the movie, effectively adding an extra act to a film that didn’t need one. It’s not a fun act either, darkly hinting at the protagonist’s fiancée having been seduced by a romantic rival and holy cats we didn’t need that stuff at that point in the film. This is the final touch that highlights all the nagging annoyances with the film—How it Ends overplays most of its cards and ends up satisfying no one with an open-ended ending.   In the tradition of movies that don’t stick their landing, it puts the rest of the film in question—the way society collapses within twenty-four hours after the Internet stops working and the government can’t be bothered to reassure the population. (Well, this may be the most realistic part of the movie—although I note that once more Canada is offered as an answer. The film was filmed in Winnipeg, something most clearly seen in a scene with a train sporting Canadian National livery.)  The lack of characterization becomes far more important once the post-apocalyptic quest is dismissed and we dive into character drama. I originally thought that something may have happened during the production of the film, but checking reviews of the original script (which was a Black List favourite for 2010) suggests that the flaws of the film were baked in from the beginning. How it Ends makes some elementary blunders for no clear reason, and shoots itself in the gut when a simpler, cleaner approach would have managed to keep things together.