The World's End

The World's End is the third film of Edgar Wright's Cornetto Trilogy, three comedy films that dabble in other genres starring Simon Pegg and Nick Frost. I was a big fan of the first, the zombie-infested Shaun of the Dead, but the second film, action-flick Hot Fuzz left me a little underwhelmed (we've all discussed this before here on the Back-Blog, and I'll likely revisit that one soon). Rest assured, anyone who hasn't gotten around to checking out The World's End- in my opinion it's the best of the three. Pegg stars as Gary King, a deadbeat alcoholic who can't get over the best night of his life, when twenty years prior he and his four friends nearly made it through a lengthy pub crawl through their small town just after high school. Suddenly inspired to return to town to finish the job, he rounds up all of his old friends, finding them all living quiet albeit much more successful lives. They reluctantly join in out of a sense of obligation and return to the town for some heavy drinking, but the movie's first act sees Gary constantly acting like a jackass as he still behaves like a teenager, the self-described "leader" of his group. The movie very quickly shifts genres however, as it's revealed that an alien invasion has been taking place in town- this feels spoiler-y but Trev assured me that this was detailed in the movie's trailer. Anyway the movie gets more hilarious as the crew attempts to keep the pub crawl going, pretending that nothing's wrong in the hopes that it won't raise suspicion, but clearly getting hammered and losing control of themselves. There are definitely a lot of beats here that will remind you of Shaun of the Dead- yet again we have a crew led by a loser Simon Pegg in a bar trying to defend themselves from every "person" in town, but I liked the story a bit more- it's not the simple "a guy finally grows up and takes responsibility and shows leadership and heroism" but something with a little more nuance that takes a few interesting twists towards the end. I started making this post several weeks ago and have since watched Hot Fuzz. How did I like that one on a re-watch?