The World's End (2013)
Third and final film in Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg's 'Cornetto trilogy' following Shaun of the Dead (2004) and Hot Fuzz (2007).
The film boasts an excellent cast - Pegg, Nick Frost, Paddy Considine, Martin Freeman, Eddie Marsan, Rosamund Pike, and Pierce Brosnan - and follows five friends who return to their hometown to reattempt a pub crawl they failed twenty-three years earlier, only to discover the town is in the midst of an alien invasion.
This is genuinely excellent when it focuses on the five guys plus Freeman's sister Pike. There's a heartfelt poignancy to Pegg still clutching at his youth basically demanding his old friends come on the pub crawl when they clearly don't really want to having settled down from their youthful exuberance long ago. You can tell they feel a sense of embarrassment on Pegg's situation, never really growing up as such.
It's when the aliens are discovered that the film becomes more of an action movie and the film takes a kind of They Live turn. Although fun this is at the expense of the guys camaraderie and for me takes away from the film overall.
The World's End has a killer nineties indie rock soundtrack taking in Primal Scream, Happy Mondays, Suede, Soup Dragons and many more classic singles from the period.
Watching The World's End made me wear my Sisters of Mercy t-shirt today so it clearly had a great influence on me last night.
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