This is the final episode in the very loose trilogy from director Edgar Wright, and writers and co-stars Simon Pegg and Nick Frost following on from the extremely funny Shaun of the Dead and the highly amusing, if patchy, Hot Fuzz.

The story centres on five male friends, now approaching middle age, who have gone their separate ways, and all enjoying some degree of financial and domestic success but for Gary King (Simon Pegg) who has resolutely failed to grow up and has a drifting, casual drug-using lifestyle. He mocks his one-time friends for their domesticity mistaking his wastrel ways for freedom. He nonetheless persuades them all to reunite to complete an epic 12 pub crawl in their small home town of Newton Haven – a leafy, well-heeled conurbation in the stockbroker belt of southern England.

On returning to Newton Haven the men discover that the residents of the town harbour a shocking secret…

The World’s End is at its best in the first half of the film. There is more than a little poignancy as the group of friends get together on what they tacitly realise will be for all of them a last hurrah in trying to recapture their youthful excesses; ahead of them waits only old age and grandchildren bouncing off their knee. The film also has a less than sly dig at soul-less and homogenous pubs owned by corporates with no sympathy to local traditions.

The film is less successful toward the end when the town’s secret has been exposed and the friends battle for their lives, never really sure who amongst them is for real; the group’s decision to continue their alcoholic binge once the truth is exposed stretched suspension of disbelief beyond all credulity and from this point the storyline unravelled a little. The film’s ending is particularly disappointing and brought to mind TS Eliot’s line ‘This is the way the world ends: Not with a bang but a whimper.’

Nonetheless, there are several laugh out loud moments from the ensemble cast and in the main the film is amusing throughout, even in the weaker scenes. (For me, Nick Frost delivered one of the best lines and I was surprised to find myself the only one in the theatre laughing at it – I later established the term ‘punch your lights out’ is not prevalent in Australia, so the joke was possibly lost in translation.) There is also a welcome role for Rosamund Pike as an erstwhile girlfriend who does a good job breaking up the male-dominated story.

Special effects and CGI are more than adequate for a film of this genre and the action scenes from Edgar Wright were nicely handled. The film is more professionally produced than the first two in the series and there were nice deferential nods to The Village of the Damned.

The film has a good soundtrack – Blur, Pulp, The Soup Dragons –  and it was particularly nice to hear The Housemartins and The Beautiful South once more.

***

Tim Meade