How It Ends – first-look review

A cloud­less sky beams over Los Ange­les, inter­rupt­ed only by a glow­ing yel­low aster­oid hurtling destruc­tive­ly towards Earth. Down below are two incar­na­tions of Liza, her cur­rent self and her younger, teenage self, walk­ing side by side through a leafy, sun-kissed neigh­bour­hood. With its self-explana­to­ry title, How It Ends prof­fers res­o­lu­tion before it has even begun. In nav­i­gat­ing the path to the end of human­i­ty, how­ev­er, Liza hopes to find sev­er­al oth­er res­o­lu­tions for her­self alone.

Shot dur­ing the pan­dem­ic, Zoe Lis­ter-Jones and Daryl Wein’s film coa­lesces an absur­dist hon­esty in the vein of Miran­da July, an LA-mil­len­ni­al aes­thet­ic and the silli­ness of ston­er com­e­dy, com­plete with a Dude, Where’s My Car? ref­er­ence. Explor­ing their sub­urb en route to one last par­ty on the day the world is set to end, the two Lizas bump into a cast of famous faces around every cor­ner and share brief, often com­ic and some­times charm­ing moments with them.

Some are strangers who indulge in a quick game of cha­rades, as goes an ear­ly inter­ac­tion with a jovial Fred Armisen, and oth­ers are peo­ple from Liza’s past with whom she feels she needs to recon­nect before armaged­don. These seg­ments are hit-and-miss, and the longer a scene goes on the more the com­e­dy starts to wear thin. A joke with Olivia Wilde about meet­ing Tim­o­th­ée Cha­la­met in the after­life and a Zoom-based quip with Helen Hunt bor­der on cringeworthy.

These moments feel tar­get­ed, and there­fore forced, to a mil­len­ni­al audi­ence, as do sev­er­al visu­al jokes which hark back to inter­net-youth fan­tasies that now feel clichéd; Liza eats a tow­er­ing stack of pan­cakes for break­fast, drink­ing maple syrup from a glass, and then bumps into her hot ex who just hap­pens to be car­ry­ing two pup­pies at the time.

At the film’s core, how­ev­er, is the effort­less dynam­ic between Lis­ter-Jones (in the lead role as cur­rent Liza) and Cailee Spae­ny, who shines as her younger self. Their inter­ac­tion with one anoth­er is so fine-tuned, with a play­ful mim­ic­ry on dis­play that adds cred­i­bil­i­ty to the film’s more sin­cere moments. How It Ends works with a very sim­ple premise despite the major cat­a­stro­phe at hand, as Liza finds qui­et moments of spir­it from the com­mu­ni­ty around her and begins to come to terms, in par­tic­u­lar, with her feel­ings towards herself.

The moment of true res­o­lu­tion arrives not when the aster­oid hits, but when Liza is final­ly able to give the love and accep­tance she had been deny­ing her­self. It’s a lit­tle mean­der­ing in struc­ture but there is a feel­ing of real heart in the film’s idio­syn­crasies and glim­mers of stand­out com­e­dy in Lis­ter-Jones and Spaeny’s dead­pan deliv­ery. Per­haps it would have made a mem­o­rable short film, where its quirk­i­ness and ten­der­ness might not be swal­lowed by the more tire­some elements.