By Tristan Bishop
We’ve all, no doubt, seen enough of the post-apocalypse genre to last a lifetime, but what of the time leading up to the big event? Films dealing with the pre-apocalypse are few and far between, with only 1988’s excellent Miracle Mile and 1998’s Last Night sticking in the mind. These Final Hours, therefore, seemed like an appealing idea. It’s Australian, too, and they pretty much invented the blueprint for the post-nuke flick with the Mad Max films, what could possibly go wrong?
The story finds us following James (Nathan Phillips, previously seen in Wolf Creek and The Chernobyl Diaries) as he prepares for the end of the world. It appears (it isn’t really explained outright) that a comet has hit the Earth and the continents are being gradually destroyed by a huge firestorm. At the point where the film begins, Europe has already been destroyed, the US is disappearing state by state, and Australia has all of twelve hours left to exist. We find James making love to his bit-on-the-side, Zoe, before he intends to leave for a debauched party (where his actual girlfriend is waiting) because he ‘doesn’t want to feel a thing’ when the firestorm arrives. Zoe informs James she is pregnant, and, because he’s that kind of loveable guy, he shouts at her and storms out.
On his way to the party his car is stolen, and, whilst looking for another car, he comes across two men who have kidnapped a young girl and are planning to rape her. At first just planning to steal their van whilst they are otherwise occupied, he has a sudden attack of conscience and saves the girl, who asks him to find her father, who she has lost somewhere. Because James is a nice guy he decides to leave her with his sister instead, but when he gets there he discovers his sister has murdered her own children and killed herself, and so instead decides that the right thing to do is take a child to a huge sex and drugs orgy. Will James come around to his responsibility before the world ends?
Well, here goes. I went in wanting to like These Final Hours and found myself hating nearly every minute of it. It’s not that it’s a badly-made film in any respect – it looks pretty nice (perhaps slightly over-processed, but that’s par for the course these days), the sparing effects are impressive enough, and the performances are uniformly decent. However, what we’re essentially dealing with is the tale of an unlikeable guy finding his human side, and it just doesn’t work, because he never comes off as even remotely likeable. Sure, he discovers a sense of responsibility, but, whilst ‘doing the right thing’ is obviously something to be applauded, I find it hard to believe that every other person in the Perth area is out for themselves, homicidal or so completely whacked on hard drugs that they’re a danger to everyone in the vicinity. To be fair, I’ve never been to Perth, it could really be like that, but that still doesn’t make for a likeable film. And likeable seems what These Final Hours is ultimately aiming for. Glimmers of light slip through in a standout scene where the hero turns up at his mother’s house, who seems happy enough to face impending doom with a bottle of wine and a couple of unfinished jigsaw puzzles, but this is an amiable island adrift in a sea of wasted, gun-toting scumbags.
I do get the feeling that These Final Hours is maybe not ‘for’ me – the dramatic music welling up on the soundtrack to underscore the climatic moment where the lead has, whisper it, an emotion, makes me suspicious that we’re meant to feel some kind of kinship with him. In fact, I overheard a fellow viewer refer to the film as ‘life-affirming’, which I found odd as I found myself wishing the entire human race would get wiped out long before the ending. So perhaps the film will play better for emotionally-stunted jocks shirking their responsibilities to their fellow man. But I can’t imagine those guys read Brutal As Hell, so I can’t recommend These Final Hours whatsoever.
These Final Hours is in UK cinemas on 6th May.