Welcome to the new profile
We're still working on updating some profile features. To see the badges, ratings breakdowns, and polls for this profile, please go to the previous version.
Reviews28
paul-2686's rating
I don't think How It Ends "starts out great" as many reviewers have suggested. I think it starts poorly, continues poorly, and then just stops rather than "ending."
I don't think the film's creators ever had any idea what was going actually going on in their own story. I think it's a movie that contains nothing but its premise. You can make a decent film out of human reactions to incomprehensible events, it has been done. But it has not been done here.
Everything about the characters leading up to the not-ending is awkward and implausible. There isn't a genuine human reaction to each other or the situation from start to finish. (Or not finished, in this case.) Whatever is going on, these characters are not responding to it in a convincing way.
Strangers meeting in the early stages of a disaster are mostly just going to want to TALK to each other - not kill each other, because hey, gas shortage, amiright?
Baffled, scare humans exchange news. Even if we have no real news to exchange, we try. We gossip and speculate. But not these characters! They seem weirdly at peace with what's going on. It's strange and awful, but what are you going to do? It is what it is, whatever it is. Why ask questions? Just keep going, we've got an ending to avoid!
I couldn't stop watching, unfortunately, because it seemed like there had to be a payoff of some kind coming. It might be weak. It might make me roll my eyes. But there had to be something. There's really not. Not one question raised by the story is ever answered. This film is a tease.
I don't think the film's creators ever had any idea what was going actually going on in their own story. I think it's a movie that contains nothing but its premise. You can make a decent film out of human reactions to incomprehensible events, it has been done. But it has not been done here.
Everything about the characters leading up to the not-ending is awkward and implausible. There isn't a genuine human reaction to each other or the situation from start to finish. (Or not finished, in this case.) Whatever is going on, these characters are not responding to it in a convincing way.
Strangers meeting in the early stages of a disaster are mostly just going to want to TALK to each other - not kill each other, because hey, gas shortage, amiright?
Baffled, scare humans exchange news. Even if we have no real news to exchange, we try. We gossip and speculate. But not these characters! They seem weirdly at peace with what's going on. It's strange and awful, but what are you going to do? It is what it is, whatever it is. Why ask questions? Just keep going, we've got an ending to avoid!
I couldn't stop watching, unfortunately, because it seemed like there had to be a payoff of some kind coming. It might be weak. It might make me roll my eyes. But there had to be something. There's really not. Not one question raised by the story is ever answered. This film is a tease.
Yes, this movie was better than expected, better than the other sequels (which lowered our expectations)... but that doesn't mean it was actually good. Not even close.
Read the book twenty years ago, loved it, and mostly enjoyed Verhoeven's funky interpretation in 1997. Nauseated by ST2 and ST3.
Just bemused by this one.
A ridiculous predictable plot... continuity weirdness everywhere... flat characters... stilted voice acting... lines so corny they were make you laugh AT the film, not with it.
The campy, corny style of the original was part of the satire, and it was kind of brilliant. The corn here was either a tone deaf imitation, or more likely just clunky filmmaking.
But! Some good art, tasty eye candy, creative sound, and a few good sci-fi ideas. Definitely not a TOTAL waste of time.
Read the book twenty years ago, loved it, and mostly enjoyed Verhoeven's funky interpretation in 1997. Nauseated by ST2 and ST3.
Just bemused by this one.
A ridiculous predictable plot... continuity weirdness everywhere... flat characters... stilted voice acting... lines so corny they were make you laugh AT the film, not with it.
The campy, corny style of the original was part of the satire, and it was kind of brilliant. The corn here was either a tone deaf imitation, or more likely just clunky filmmaking.
But! Some good art, tasty eye candy, creative sound, and a few good sci-fi ideas. Definitely not a TOTAL waste of time.
It's really impossible to overstate the awfulness on display here. This isn't just a "bad film" — it's incoherent. There's really nothing at all to even criticize. It's so disorganized and amateurish it's about as meaningful as watching watching static. Some actors shout some things. They seem alarmed and angry. There are bangs and flashes. Occasionally some very not-so-special effects appear on the screen. I could tell there was an alien invasion and there were Wars of the Worlds type tripody invaders, but that's about it.
I couldn't watch past the first half hour. I didn't feel like I was stopping anything in particular. There was nothing going on to stop. It was just an incomprehensible stream of images and noises that I finally got tired of trying to make sense of.
Even calling this a "student project" would be giving it too much credit: I've seen (much) better student film projects. It's a total mystery how something like this ends up with being distributed. Weird.
I couldn't watch past the first half hour. I didn't feel like I was stopping anything in particular. There was nothing going on to stop. It was just an incomprehensible stream of images and noises that I finally got tired of trying to make sense of.
Even calling this a "student project" would be giving it too much credit: I've seen (much) better student film projects. It's a total mystery how something like this ends up with being distributed. Weird.