If there is one common thread running through the seeming never-ending spate of apocalypse-themed movies and TV shows of late, it is that it is possible, even as the world is ending, to come across some modicum of humanity, a lingering trace of the better angels of our nature.
The cynics would likely reject this out of hand, but first time director Zak Hilditch is clearly not one of them, choosing to believe in his first feature, Aussie apocalyptic drama These Final Hours, that even the most hedonistic of souls can find some redemption in the most dire and final of circumstances.
In this case it’s a giant wall of sky and land-devouring, violently-red fire that is sweeping inexorably towards Australia over a 12 hour period from its starting place in the North Atlantic, its civilisation-ending, take-no-prisoners carnage charted by an unseen radio announcer who reminds us at every turn that the end is well and truly nigh.
In common with just about everyone else in Perth, Australia, James (Nathan Phillips) is determined to go out with an escapist bang, all too aware that being consumed by fire will not be the most pleasant of ways to shuffle off his mortal coil.
Leaving the love of his life Zoe (Jessica De Gouw) sheltering in a beach house where she spent a great deal of time as a child and thus feels “safe”, he sets off across Perth, cast by talented cinematographer Bonnie Elliott in an almost-beautiful, increasingly intensely orange glow, to find the party-to-end-all-parties, being held at the home of camo-underweared Freddy (Daniel Henshall), brother of his emotionally superficial, vapid girlfriend Vicky (Kathryn Beck).
This understandable though flagrantly selfish act mirrors a society in dramatic free fall as law and order breaks down spectacularly, mad men with machetes take it upon themselves to end the lives of others before they can do it themselves, dead bodies hang from street lights and whole families take themselves out in scenes of suicidal accommodation to the inevitable.
This brutal depiction of the absolute worst of times, which pulls no punches in its depiction of violence, death and narcissistic fury, stands in stark contrast to other end of the world disaster movies like Independence Day and The Day After Tomorrow, which held out some hope that humanity could claw its way back from the abyss.
But there is no coming back from this continent-destroying wave of annihilistic fire, and James knows it, which is why he intends to get as “off his face” as much as is humanly possible so that the end of the world doesn’t hurt quite as much as he knows it’s going to.
But a funny thing happens on the way to the apocalypse with James the only one in a position to rescue young girl Rose (Angourie Rice), separated from her father by the chaos of the day, from two thugs who no doubt intend to mark humanity’s erasure from planet Earth in the most dark and demented of ways.
Initially intending to drop her off at his sister’s, a plan which proves impossible to fulfil when certain circumstances come into play, he takes her to the party where his plans to blot out the looming agony with a whole heap of ecstasy (pretty much literally) don’t pan out as envisaged and he is forced to decide whether he wants to go out in a drunken, drug-fuelled blast of orgiastic excess or selflessly do whatever it takes to reunite Rose with her father.
That he chooses the latter may come as little surprise but Hilditch’s manages to pull off this transformation from hedonistic whore to caring father figure with a minimum of mawkish sentimentality and fuss, giving These Final Hours, which sits in a vividly-evoked world of violence and societal collapse, an emotionally-poignant core that is affecting to the end.
Hilditch manages that rare feat of counter-balancing humanity’s worst inclinations with its most tender and touching, granting These Final Hours, which ends with one of the powerfully emotionally and searingly beautiful scenes ever captured on film, a poetic heart that the confronting violence of the initial scenes, and an at times patchy narrative, may not immediately suggest will be forthcoming.
It is intense, darkly, doggedly nihilistic, and grimly, unsettlingly realistic at every turn but These Final Hours, while offering no hope for humanity as a whole, does suggest that redemption is possible, that it is worthwhile trying to make a difference in someone else’s life, even as the world spins into a frighteningly final abyss from which there is no return.