These Final Hours

What would you do with just 12 hours remain­ing until guar­an­teed glob­al anni­hi­la­tion? Cher­ish your last moments in the com­pa­ny of your loved ones? Or lit­er­al­ly par­ty like there’s no tomor­row in a bid to numb the immi­nent pain? This is the quandary fac­ing vest-wear­ing Aussie, James (Nathan Phillips), who choos­es the lat­ter, aban­don­ing his preg­nant lover to attend a killer par­ty before a fire-storm caused by a cat­a­clysmic mete­or strike con­firms earth’s expiry date.

The­mat­i­cal­ly there’s noth­ing new going on here. James’ jour­ney to dis­cov­er what’s real­ly impor­tant in life is a trope as old as the apoc­a­lyp­tic hills. But, at just under an 90 min­utes, These Final Hours main­tains a swift momen­tum, no moment is wast­ed or unim­por­tant, and a real imme­di­a­cy is cre­at­ed with the char­ac­ters’ time-restrict­ed strug­gles. With­in the space of 10 min­utes, a machete wield­ing mani­ac chas­es James, divert­ing his par­ty plans and caus­ing him to res­cue the kid­napped Rose (Angourie Rice), a young girl search­ing for her dad, splat­ter­ing her oppres­sors with his nifty ham­mer skills.

While this relent­less pac­ing keeps things enjoy­able on a nar­ra­tive lev­el, it lim­its our emo­tion­al con­nec­tion to James and Rose despite com­mit­ted per­for­mances from Nathan and Angourie. They just aren’t giv­en time to draw out indi­vid­ual traits which could have made these char­ac­ters tru­ly mem­o­rable. The throngs of par­ty goers are ren­dered as noth­ing more than degen­er­ate arse­holes who delight in heinous debauch­ery. Per­haps this is the point, and some may may even enjoy their out­ra­geous antics, but the film doesn’t ful­fil its emo­tion­al­ly affect­ing potential.

Despite the imper­son­al­i­ty of this deprav­i­ty, there’s a hand­ful of fleet­ing­ly mov­ing scenes which tri­umph human con­nec­tions over tem­po­rary par­ty shenani­gans. Thought-pro­vok­ing asides explore the accep­tance of our innate immor­tal­i­ty and the beau­ty that can be sal­vaged from the worst of sce­nar­ios. Bon­nie Elliott’s cin­e­matog­ra­phy per­fect­ly com­ple­ments these more sub­tle instances, the orange-hued, mut­ed aes­thet­ic cap­tur­ing grace amid the des­o­la­tion and despair.