p e n g u i n d e v i l

Well, call me a rare fool but I watched Netflix’s How It Ends and I actually liked it. I didn’t Google it until it was over, so I was able to like it unsoiled by the amount of dislike leveled at it.


The story was maybe a bit light, but, you know, sometimes life’s just like that. A couple in Seattle are planning to get married, so the fella goes to Chicago to ask for the blessing of the gal’s dad, who is a curmudgeonly, wealthy, retired marine who thinks that said fella is kind of a loser… Fella basically blows it at dinner with the folks and leaves without asking his big question. Next morning on phone to gal, some terrible unseen and unspoken disaster happens… Gal is seriously concerned about something outside her window, but then the call goes dead. Fella heads to the airport to catch his flight, but then all the power goes out and all the flights are cancelled and a newscast comes on about how something has happened on the west coast, but they don’t have any info about what it was. Fella heads back to gal’s parents apartment and finds dad preparing to drive out to Seattle to find his daughter. Of course, regardless of the dislike between them, they team up and head out to drive through the unknown from Chicago to Seattle in a caddy.

As one might imagine, civilization has taken a bit of a fall out west, so they encounter numerous bad guys along the way, lots of scenes of driving, and a supporting character who I really liked but didn’t last long… With the two main characters, Theo James is convincing as a guy who really just doesn’t know what to do or how to react to anything, Forest Whitaker is convincing as someone who knows all too well what to do and how to react (and knows that others don’t, yeah, kind of a jerk), so Grace Dove is appreciated as the only genuinely cool character in the movie.

I quite liked the pacing of it: driving, countryside, moments of evasion, some strange and mysterious sights in the air, and then more driving. Kind of like Damnation Alley in concept, but not dumb and corny like Damnation Alley. I liked the ending as well, but we don’t walk about those things here. It’s a road trip movie, a bonding movie, an Armageddon movie (maybe), a post-apocalypse movie (maybe), and a disaster movie in which you don’t know what the disaster is.

Though there were some potentially implausible action escapes, it doesn’t have all of the stupid, over-the-top action stuff and mumbo jumbo that Hollywood usually uses to make these sort of movies boring and unbearable. Just some people trying to get somewhere and not willing to stop at anything to get there,

As soon as this all started I had a strong need to watch 28 Days Later. Though it’s my favorite Zombie movie (regardless of the fact that it contains no zombies), it is also my favorite virus movie and always a fun kick in the pants.

Thinking about how the fed’s prepared us for the pandemic, I thought of the scientist in the first scene… He really could have tried harder to convince the activists to not let the monkeys out “they’re Infected!” pause “With rage!” is going to be kind of meaningless to most people. “We’ve given the monkeys a virus that fills them with rage. Let even one of those monkeys out of its cage and they will attack us viciously and we will all be dead” would have been a much more straightforward way to communicate the issue.

And the lead character, not only is pretty annoying, but is also sort of a bad omen as, whenever he shows up people leave their “safe” situation and head out into the world to end up being killed. But I still love it! Except for the end…

I’m convinced that the movie was actually supposed to end at the gate-crashing scene and that the rest of it was added on to appeal to audiences. It should end at the gate. First time I saw it, I knew that was the end… But then it kept going…

Secondly, I tried to watch Outbreak. I’ve seen it before and recalled it being watchable… But this time, no. I maybe made it half way through… It’s just a lame movie. Everything overly-hollywooded and corny. It really should stop appearing on lists of the “best” pandemic/disaster movies.