After her excellent 2017 directorial debut Band Aid, writer/actor/director Zoe Lister-Jones took a bit of a misstep with last year’s The Craft: Legacy. Not to worry, though, because Lister-Jones seems to have righted course, this time joining forces with her husband, the filmmaker Darryl Wein (White Rabbit), for How It Ends, a neo-Odyssey kind of thing wherein our heroine Liza (Lister-Jones) spends her last day on Earth trekking Los Angeles to right her wrongs, say her piece and, hopefully, attain some form of growth right under the wire.
Filmed in 2020 at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, How It Ends upends the apocalypse genre by presenting a motley cast of characters, all seemingly at peace with the massive meteor barreling toward the planet. They know it’ll end all life around 2 am, but most folks go about their lives (with maybe a little more drug use), including Liza’s friend Mandy who announces she’s throwing an End of the World party that night.
Liza, meanwhile, plans to while away her last hours smoking weed and eating whatever, a plan derailed by the metaphysical representation of her younger self (Craft Legacy alum Cailee Spaeny) who insists she attend the party, but only after they make peace with Liza’s mother and father (Helen Hunt and Bradely Whitford), an estranged best friend (Olivia Wilde), the ex who didn’t deserve her love (the always-glorious Larmone Morris of New Girl and Woke fame)—and the one who did (Logan Marshall-Green). Along the way, Liza and her younger self meet a veritable cavalcade of neighborhood weirdos played by what must have been whatever nearby actors weren’t busy that day: Paul Scheer, Colin Hanks, Charlie Day, Whitney Cummings, Sharon Van Etten, Marry Elizabeth Ellis, Rob Huebel, Ayo Edebiri, Fred Armisen, Glenn Howerton and others, all of whom seem to be operating on a higher plane of existence than usual—likely because of the impending death—all of whom are strangely calm and accepting of the meteor.
How It Ends is as simple as it gets, a film that leans into its words and messaging rather than flash. Most of the film’s poignant moments are doled out in walking scenes wherein Liza and her younger self reflect and bicker or dissect what it means when we forget our own value. “You don’t count,” Liza repeatedly tells herself. How often do we all have that thought when addressing ourselves? This makes for quality dramatic moments among the otherwise silly comedic ones; nihilism is laced throughout, though it’s hard to identify the goings on so neatly as the moral, if there is one, feels like it’s more about how it’s important to care about the right things, even if we spend most of our time fretting over the wrong.
Lister-Jones and Spaeny are glorious together, perhaps from a connection formed while filming The Craft, but nonetheless a notable one. They eke out the most impressive performances in the film (though hats off to Charlie Day for a befuddlingly charming speech about losing one’s shoes), but how they play off the expanded cast feels the most meaningful.
How It Ends is thus the quirky kind of indie gold your film nerd friends are always raving about—a quiet and simple story told well with a handful of big laughs and a healthy dose of that cinematic something that sticks with us after, gently guiding us toward our own forms of contemplation and reflection. Just try to be nicer to yourself.
8
+Lister-Jones and Spaeny; the deep stuff
-Kinda cutesy sometimes; some tired jokes
How It Ends
Directed by Lister-Jones and Wein
With Lister-Jones and Spaeny
Amazon, R, 82 min.