How It Ends Review Spoiler Free
How It Ends is one of the latest films to come to the Netflix streaming platform as a Netflix original. The film comes directed by David M. Rosenthal who some may know as the director of The Perfect Guy (2015). How It Ends stars Theo James, Forest Whitaker and Kat Graham. The film is an action adventure story about a man looking for his fiancée in the middle of an apocalypse.
When I saw the trailer for this film early in the morning today, I was initially intrigued. Many people probably don’t know this, but I actually really enjoy Forest Whitaker films. Seeing him in this film was enough to get me to watch it, but also seeing that it was an action adventure apocalypse film with Forest Whittaker in it, was a massive plus. But on the other hand I was a little cautious about deciding to spend time on it this morning as I had just spent yesterday morning watching Extinction on Netflix.
The good news is that How It Ends is a much better end of the world film experience than Extinction. The bad news, is that How It Ends has issues of it’s own. But first I’ll mention what’s good about it.
The story is great, I love an adventure film every now and again and the film does try to develop Will (Theo James) as much as it can and his relationship with his future father in law (Forest Whittaker). The problem I had with the main character is that for some reason and I don’t know why this is, but he makes stupid decisions constantly in the journey which for most people watching will make you want to pull your hair out. I do have an understanding that his character is a lawyer so an apocalypse situation is not really his environment, but honestly I expect more intelligence. But nevertheless it’s not that bad and actually I really enjoyed the character journey, it’s actually mostly pretty good.
Where the film has a most major issue is with the ending. Now I’m not going to talk about what it is, but basically this is one of those films that ends with an ambiguous ending. This is okay in films, I have no problem with that. But when it works, it’s usually for films where they’re more artistic and they lead you towards a point where after watching you have a lot to think about and discuss, there’s an ambiguous meaning there. But in this film, it’s a completely linear story, there’s very little to analyse or discuss and to end it the way it did doesn’t help. If anything it makes the lead up to the end and the entire journey frustrating in the end.
The actors all do really well. I enjoyed the performance from Theo James who played the main character Will. There was some variation to what he could do and a few different emotions that his character went through. By the end of the film, I enjoyed this actor and hope to see him in more things in the future. Forest Whittaker was another great part of the film. To be honest if he wasn’t there and we just sat through a bunch of lesser known actors with the story we got it might have been a little boring. Forest Whittaker had good screen time and great presence. I do wish though he had even more screen time than he did though. I hope Netflix continues working with both these actors in the future as I’d like to see more from them.
The special effects are pretty decent. For a TV movie it gets the job done. There aren’t really any big CGI moments in this film, but there’s quite a bit of weather effects, car chases and shootings. There’s also various locations across America in which all the events take place and overall it’s a nice country to look at.
Overall this is an entertaining action adventure film. Although the story is quite linear, it kept me interested all the way until the end. The ending I think will be a point of frustration for many, but other than that it’s worth taking a look at if you’ve got a bit of time this week. Forest Whittaker is the main reason to watch this film, but Theo James does do his best as well and he’s also quite likeable. If you’re choosing between watching How It Ends and Extinction tonight on Netflix, choose How It Ends, it’s slightly better.
