It's the End of the World as we know it  and Hollywood doesn't feel fine!

Rating: 5/10 (3 October 2016)

Should I or should I not review this movie? That's the question I asked myself for nearly a week, because – and I do fully realize that nobody cares, really – I decided long time ago that I would restrict myself to exclusively reviewing horror, cult or exploitation movies and then preferably only the most obscure and peculiar ones. I want to stay clear of mainstream Hollywood productions with famous names in the cast or gigantic budgets. But on the other hand I truly fancy apocalyptic tales and flamboyant gory stuff, so in spite of its A-listed cast, "This is the End" actually qualifies to receive a review after all. Okay, the whole project is basically a joke and probably only the cast and crew found it truly entertaining, but it does inarguably feature gore, mayhem and a truckload of references/homages to classic as well as lesser known genre titles.
The idea is undeniably original and innovative. A group of actors, supposedly not playing but "being" themselves, are gathered together for a housewarming party when all of a sudden the biblical apocalypse descends upon them; - and the rest of Hollywood and the world I reckon. Most of the party guests are annihilated straight away, like for example Rihanna who gets sucked into a super-massive black hole in the ground or Michael Cera who gets impaled on a lantern pole, but six of them entrench themselves in the ultramodern home of their host. They are James Franco, Seth Rogen, Jonah Hill, Jay Baruchel, Craig Robinson and the uninvited Danny McBride. Whilst fire and brimstone reproduce hellish monsters outside, the survivors are practically murdering each other on the inside. "This is the End" is not much more than a spitfire of absurd situations and inside jokes about the cast members' previous collaborations (particularly "Pineapple Express" seems popular). If you don't particularly like these guys or the films they made, you will most certainly dislike "This is the End" and consider it to be a pretentious and nonsensical piece of rubbish. As a film fan, you can't really ignore the influence guys like Seth Rogen and Jonah Hill had on comedy cinema in the last 10-15 years. They appeared in too many movies to list, often together, and the vast majority of them were box office hits ("Superbad", "Knocked-Up", "The Interview", "Bad Neighbors" ). Their humor is often crude, monotonous and orientated at soft-drug use and bedevilment between friends, but their films do feature imaginative premise and many downright ingenious ideas. "This is the End" also relies on a handful of really strong sequences and comic highlights (for example the exorcism of Jonah Hill) but otherwise it's not much more than an okay time-waster.