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These Final Hours
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| Year: |
2013
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Director: |
Zak Hilditch
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| Stars: |
Nathan Phillips, Angourie Rice, Jessica De Gouw, Sarah Snook, Lynette Curran, Kathryn Beck, Daniel Henshall, Peter Docker, Ben Sutton, David Field
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| Genre: |
Science Fiction |
| Rating: |
  7 (from 1 vote) |
| Review: |
James (Nathan Phillips) broke up with his girlfriend Zoe (Jessica De Gouw) recently, which he is starting to regret, mainly because the world is ending. Yes, death from above has already wiped out the East Coast of North America, the west coast of Africa and the whole of Europe, and the astronomical phenomenon is advancing down the globe to hit Asia, South America and Australasia, which is where he is. In this Australian city the mood has been anarchic as law has utterly broken down, with gangs and wild-eyed loners roaming the streets, or at least that's all James encounters as he drives around various obstacles his journey throws up, such as the machete-wielding madman who forces his way into the passenger seat...
But don't get too used to seeing him, for after he steals James's car keys our hero escapes and ends up meeting someone far more significant. Writer and director Zak Hilditch was patently inspired by the fifties apocalypse movie On the Beach in making the destruction of the planet move unstoppably down the continents to reach his native Australia, though the reality of their impending doom did not leave the citizens murdering and raping their way through their final days as they do in this film. So what had changed? In the previous effort the population simply accepted their fate with overwhelming misery, but come the twenty-first century if it was happening then bad behaviour ruled.
Were people simply less likely to take into account other's feelings when These Final Hours was made, so that the idea the world would go nuts and revolt against any tenets of decency when there was no more time left wound up far more convincing to its contemporary audience? Bearing in mind that in 1959 there were far fewer end of the world movies than there were when this was released, was that pessimism about how people would reject drawing closer together for comfort and be more likely to attack and exploit when there was nothing more to say indicative of how we saw ourselves? Or more accurately, how we saw the threat of others, others who would embrace danger and lawbreaking?
Certainly there was a strain of bleakness in Hilditch's vision of this Armageddon that lasted for quite some distance in a film that didn't break the hour and a half mark, yet in James, who doesn't appear to have been that great a guy before his paternal instincts were awakened, he found a note of hope that we would not all resort to savagery. Initially, he is selfish and unwilling to get involved with any of the trouble he witnesses, but these circumstances have a way of dragging bystanders into them, and when he witnesses an abducted young girl being carried kicking and screaming into a suburban house by two terrible men he feels he has to act. He needs their truck, but the overwhelming guilt at leaving the girl to be raped he would feel prompts him to take a hammer and rush to her rescue, which he does. She is understandably wary, but when she realises he has just saved her life she is more willing to go with him.
That said, the irony that saving someone's life mere hours before it was going to be snuffed out anyway was not lost on the film, but then again the theme that it's never too late to redeem yourself was uppermost. The girl introduces herself as Rose (rising star Angourie Rice) and asks if James can take her to see her father, who she was separated from but wanted to spend the end with, as promised. The further into the last day we go, the more James has to measure up to the fact that he has a responsibility now to look after Rose, not something he ever felt ready to deal with previously, especially when we learn that he left Zoe when she told him she was pregnant. Therefore he is getting to experience fatherhood through his care for the child, though continually in the face of the casual horrors vomited up by the society reimagined as a nightmare, with memorable setpieces like the party of a bunch of revellers (including James's other girlfriend) forcing themselves to have fun to the point of oblivion (Sarah Snook has a creepy bit here as a mother driven mad with grief). All in all, nicely done, with clear messages though an over-reliance on sweary dialogue; you may argue the end of the world would turn the air blue, however. Music by Cornel Wilczek.
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| Reviewer: |
Graeme Clark
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