These Final Hours

It's unfair to compare These Final Hours to The Rover, but it's hard not to. Two Australian films trying to portray a realistic approach to the apocalypse are inevitably going to be put side by side. It's a shame too, because these are two completely different flicks. The Rover theorised that in the face of the end of the world, people would cling to the mundanities of modern life, determined to deny the prevalent truth that they're nothing more than a genetic outcome. These Final Hours ruminates on what might happen should we all be told we have twelve hours to live. It cleverly avoids spending time discussing how or why the apocalypse looms (the opening montage is basically, "It's...uh...meteors...or, um, the...sun's crashing into the Earth...whatever"). Where The Rover put forth the notion that surviving Doomsday would leave humans even more sure that they're special, These Final Hours says that knowing everyone will be dead in less than a day would erase that certainty entirely. For 87 minutes, it takes you on a frenetic tour through humanity's absolute worst, best and, well, human traits. It works so well on paper. And regrettably, it falls over a lot in execution.

It's biggest crime is thinking so small. It opens very strong, with James (Nathan Phillips) getting ready to leave Zoe's (Jessica De Gouw) beach house for a massive party that his girlfriend waits for him at. The knowledge that he'll be dead in twelve hours is more than he can mentally process, and his gut response is to fill his body with as many substances possible to numb the searing pain he and everyone else will soon experience. Zoe tells him she's pregnant. "What the fuck does it matter?" he responds, as he paces the room and can't quite work out what to do with his hands. He leaves her, for his own selfish gains. And while this is a disgustingly selfish act, it's understandable. It's realistic. And then his first encounter with another human out on the road is a machete-wielding maniac who's put foil all over his house to stop the heat, forces James to stop the car so he can cleave a bystander to death and chases him through the neighbourhood to a bad heavy-metal score. It seems the only things that writer/director Zak Hilditch could think of humanity doing when it received a collective death clock was murderous insanity, paedophelia, group suicides and mass indulgence of hedonism.

At least, that was my first thought as the credits rolled. But then I realised how overly harsh a criticism that was. This movie has a lot of problems. Its portrayal of humanity's uglier side is often comically over the top and out to shock rather than provoke. The dialogue is laughably awful at times (someone literally says, "Life is stronger than death."). It regularly doesn't realise the audience is already two steps ahead of it. But it's also full of little moments that truly capture something real, something that cuts to the core of what makes us collectively human, on the light and the dark sides. A man attacks James with clear and total intent to kill, until James gets the upper hand. With death so close, he changes his tune in a flash and offers him a cut of the small girl he's locked in the room next door. Later, James is in his sister's house with the aforementioned and now rescued small girl, Rose (Angourie Rice). Searching for his absent sibling, he realises he's about to see something heartbreaking and tells Rose to swim in the pool. She doesn't have her bathers, and he tells her to go in her dress. Her face lights up with joy and she dashes off. Small, beautiful moments. James and Rose enter a library, and come across a cop and his wife who are planning to execute their children to save them the pain of burning alive. The cop begs James to shoot them for him. James refuses. The cop, desperate for any reprieve from the life-shattering act he is about to commit, asks then for forgiveness. As if James is God. "...You're forgiven," James says, and walks away with Rose. There's no excusing what is about to happen in this room, but with the mortality of every single human never being more apparent, what is two words if it provides comfort?

My favourite scene in These Final Hours is a conversation between James and his mother (Lynette Curran). She asks if James has seen his sister. James can't bring himself to tell his mum of the horrors he saw in that house. She assumes that because she wouldn't answer the door the day previous that she has some sort of beef with a grandmother seeing her grandkids. James, knowing that his mum's final thoughts can't be negative, tells her he did head to her house after all. And at the last second, he lies and says they'd left. Because even in the face of our deaths, we cannot truly sacrifice our compassion. James asks his mum what she intends to do with her final hours. With a cigarette in one hand and a glass of wine in the other, standing in the backyard in a sundress, she casually replies, "I've still got a few puzzles laying around." It's the little moments that make These Final Hours. It has all the subtlety of a brick to the face at the worst of times, which is unfortunate. It doesn't match the quality of The Rover or The Babadook (another fantastic 2014 Australian movie). But in the end, it's an Australian film that doesn't suck. It exists in an industry that just lost its main source of funding to a government that seems to be punishing us for voting them in, and its in dire need of your money. For this flick, they deserve it. Skip Transformers: Age of a Lot of Loud Noise and Confusion and catch These Final Hours instead.