How It Ends – first-look review | Little White Lies

Festivals

How It Ends – first-look review

30 Jan 2021

Words by Caitlin Quinlan

Three young women, one in a fringe-trimmed blouse, standing in front of a brick wall.
Three young women, one in a fringe-trimmed blouse, standing in front of a brick wall.
There’s shades of Miran­da July in Zoe Lis­ter-Jones and Daryl Wein’s dead­pan end-of-the-world comedy.

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.

You might like

Accessibility Settings

Text

Applies the Open Dyslexic font, designed to improve readability for individuals with dyslexia.

Applies a more readable font throughout the website, improving readability.

Underlines links throughout the website, making them easier to distinguish.

Adjusts the font size for improved readability.

Visuals

Reduces animations and disables autoplaying videos across the website, reducing distractions and improving focus.

Reduces the colour saturation throughout the website to create a more soothing visual experience.

Increases the contrast of elements on the website, making text and interface elements easier to distinguish.