How It Ends (2021)

[Adam Lenhardt]

Title: How It Ends (2021)

Tagline: Party like there is no tomorrow.

Genre: Comedy

Director: Zoe Lister-Jones, Daryl Wein

Cast: Zoe Lister-Jones, Cailee Spaeny, Whitney Cummings, Tawny Newsome, Olivia Wilde, Finn Wolfhard, Logan Marshall-Green, Nick Kroll, Bobby Lee, Fred Armisen, Glenn Howerton, Bradley Whitford, Ayo Edebiri, Sharon Van Etten, Paul W. Downs, Raymond Chan Jr, Lamorne Morris, Angelique Cabral, Rob Huebel, Paul Scheer, Helen Hunt, Colin Hanks, Charlie Day, Mary Elizabeth Ellis, Pauly Shore

Release: 2021-07-20

Runtime: 83

Plot: In this feel-good apocalyptic comedy, Liza embarks on a hilarious journey through LA in hopes of making it to her last party before it all ends, running into an eclectic cast of characters along the way.

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

Zoe Lister-Jones stars in, co-writes, and co-directs this indie comedy, which took advantage of the pandemic lockdowns to shoot scenes that would have normally been a lot more difficult.

In the final hours before a giant meteor crashes into the west coast of the United States and wipes out life on planet Earth, Liza wanders the streets of Los Angeles with a metaphysical manifestation of her younger self, seeking closure with several people in her life and having a variety of memorable encounters with strangers who are all facing the end in their own ways -- often, with copious amounts of drugs.

It's more a collection of vignettes with a heavily improvised feel than a unified narrative; the only connective tissue is Liza herself. Some vignettes work better than others, but the best ones achieve genuine poignancy. One of the curious things about this particular end of the world story is the complete absence of existential dread; any panic and civil unrest has long ago come and gone. Everybody (except for the odd conspiracy theorist) has accepted the inevitability of imminent death and isn't much concerned with raging against the dying of the light.

As Liza and Little Liza respectively, Lister-Jones and Cailee Spaeny are constantly engaged in a delicate and careful dance with one another; as two different aspects of the same character, there are moments when their performances perfectly mirror one another, and there are moments where their performances dramatically clash with one another. The complexity of their dialogue, which is really an internal debate, gives the movie more weight and direction than it would have otherwise had.

The supporting cast all get moments to shine despite their limited screen time. Each brings a different energy, which in turn causes the energy of the film to shift.

It's an odd one, for sure, but I enjoyed it.