How It Ends Movie Review & Film Summary (2018) | Roger Ebert
"It's an apocalyptic road trip movie between a man (Theo James) and his future father-in-law (Forest Whitaker) from Chicago to Seattle as the world is ending. It opens with relatively stale domestic drama as James' Will flies to the Windy City to meet with Whitaker's Tom, the father of the woman that Will loves, Samantha (Kat Graham). Sam is pregnant, and Will wants to ask Tom for her hand in marriage to start a family. Will is a buttoned-up millennial who has moved Tom's baby girl across the country and even once crashed his boat; Tom is a former Marine, who maintains a lot of that old-fashioned decorum (he yells at Will for swearing in front of his wife). Wouldn't it be dramatic if these two were forced into an emergency?"
Sounds interesting, right? My girlfriend and I thought so and watched it last night. I mean, c'mon, it's the destruction of Seattle and a former Marine and his snowflake son-in-law road tripping through the Midwest to get to Seattle and find out what the heck has happened.
Since Netflix has stopped their star-rating system, you really have no clue as to what you are getting into unless you do an internet search for reviews. I should have. Would have saved me from 2 hours of frustration.
**Spoilers Ahead**
So, if you decide to watch this movie despite mine and other's warnings, don't read further. Or do.
The amount of completely stupid decisions and lack of common sense just has to be seen to be believed.
I won't cover all of them, or most of them, or even a tiny fraction of them, since I believe the writing in this movie is indicative of the complete and utter lack of common sense and intelligence of those in Hollywood when it comes to survival, collapse of society (which they are trying to bring about due to their policies), natural disasters, and dealing with bad guys.
First of all, Forest Whitaker is supposedly a former Marine, who lives a comfortable life and decides to drive 2000 miles from Chicago to Seattle when the power is out, society is collapsing, and he has no idea what is going on in Seattle.
What does he bring? A single Sig Sauer P220 with a couple of magazines, a backpack, a folding knife, and a couple bottles of water.
Seriously. And he's the more prepared one.
Before they even get out of Chicago, a couple of really scuzzy and violent bad guys confront them and try to steal their car. Of course, the bad guys are Gingers and rednecks, because of course that's the major source of violent crime in Chicago... The projecting and political correctness is just insane...
So Forest has to pull his pistol to scare them off and the snowflake son-in-law makes a big deal out of him bringing a gun.
Of course he does...
And their vehicle of choice for driving cross-country through the the apocalypse with major highways shut down? A new Cadillac CTS sedan, of course.
Of course, the car gets shot up and breaks down, so they get a highway patrol Crown vic to tow the CTS to a reservation where a millennial Native American fixes the CTS. They then figure she would be handy to bring on their road trip, so they abandon the crown vic and continue in the fragile and completely stupid CTS.
Then she inexplicably wanders off into the woods a couple of days later in the middle of nowhere and abandons them after ranting about white people and how fragile they are and how Native Americans will be here long after the white man is gone. Lovely little racist rant completely ignoring reality and math.
Then, one of the most frustrating parts is when they come across a derailed train hauling dozens of hummers and Abrams tanks, just sitting there, with hundreds of 5-gallon fuel cans full of diesel.
Do they grab a hummer? Or a tank? Or rummage through the wreck for weapons or ammo? Nope.
They grab two cans of diesel and supposedly use it in the CTS and continue down the road in a busted up Cadillac.
Just one of the infuriatingly stupid decisions in the movie.
They encounter bunches of bad guys which they somehow manage to kill, but they never take their guns or ammunition. Only their gas.
The entire time, the weather is doing weird things and their are ominous messages from the West coast about what happened. Some think a major earthquake, some think a volcanic eruption, some think an attack from the Chinese. The suspense is built up very well.
Then the snowflake son gets to Seattle and it looks like an aftermath of a volcanic eruption.
He finds his woman, who has shacked up with their old apartment neighbor, who has formed an unhealthy attachment to her, thinking the hero was dead.
The neighbor also is a computer programmer and has a theory as to what happened. He thinks it is an intentional act by the government because it mirrors some computer simulations he's seen. But he has no proof or explanation as to how the government managed to start volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, tsunamis, wildfires, and national power grid failures.
They call him crazy and he tries to take his ball and go home, so the hero kills him.
There is another supposed volcanic eruption, though the movie never actually confirms that's what happened, they just show volcanic ash everywhere without ever referring to it or explaining it.
So the re-joined happy couple jumps into a crappy old Jeep Wagoneer, ignoring a nice Toyota Landcruiser outfitted for expedition work and full of supplies, and take off down the road with a volcanic ash cloud closing in on them
They just start to outrun the cloud and it seems to recede when the movie suddenly ends.
Yep. Just freaking ends!
You never find out what caused the disaster, you never find out about the other characters, you never find out if the main characters actually survive or what they do in the future to survive.
Completely stupid, irrational, infuriating movie that shows quite explicitly just how stupid and moronic the people in Hollywood are.
Don't waste your time...