Logan Marshall-Green Archives

Review: ‘Intrusion’ (2021), starring Freida Pinto and Logan Marshall-Green

February 13, 2022

by Carla Hay

Logan Marshall-Green and Freida Pinto in “Intrusion” (Photo by Ursula Coyote/Netflix)

“Intrusion” (2021)

Directed by Adam Salky

Culture Representation: Taking place in the fictional U.S. town of Corallis, the dramatic film “Intrusion” features a predominantly white cast of characters (with one person of Indian heritage and a few African Americans) representing the working-class and middle-class.

Culture Clash: After a married couple experiences a terrifying and deadly home invasion, the wife begins her own investigation into why this break-in happened.

Culture Audience: “Intrusion” will appeal mainly to people who are interested in mystery thrillers that follow a predictable formula and have too many moments of ridiculousness to be considered high-quality entertainment.

“Intrusion” is a mystery crime drama that’s so lazy and mediocre, it’s too easy to figure out who’s the chief villain, long before the movie is over. The only memorable things about “Intrusion” are some of the ludicrous and unbelievable scenes that some viewers might consider unintentionally funny. The film’s climactic showdown scene permanently sinks “Intrusion” into the cesspool where vapid and generic thrillers are quickly forgotten.

Directed by Adam Salky, “Intrusion” has very little flair, wit or charisma. And that includes the non-existent chemistry between Freida Pinto and Logan Marshall-Green, who play the married couple at the center of the story: Meera Parsons and Henry Parsons. Meera (who’s a therapist) and Henry (who’s an architect) have been married to each other for 12 years. They have recently moved into their dream home that Henry built for Meera.

The house is in a fictional American small town called Corallis, which has a mix of working-class and middle-class people. Moving to a small town is quite an adjustment for this couple. Meera, who is originally from India, met Henry when they used to live in Boston. Meera and Henry have also had a big challenge in their marriage: Meera is recovering from breast cancer, which is currently in remission.

One evening, shortly after moving into their new house, Meera and Henry have dinner together at a nearby restaurant. When they come home, they immediately see that their living room and study have been ransacked. When an investigating cop named Detective Steven Morse (played by Robert John Burke) shows up to take the crime report, Henry tells him that two cell phones and a laptop computer were stolen from the home. Detective Morse remarks that if Henry designed the house himself, then Henry should’ve also installed a security system.

Not long after the break-in, Meera has an appointment with her oncologist Dr. Burke (played by Denielle Fisher Johnson), who has some good news for Meera: The test results came back for a lump that Meera felt on one of her breasts, and the lump was scar tissue, not cancer that returned. Dr. Burke can see how Meera’s cancer recovery has been taking a toll on Meera’s emotional well-being, so she recommends that Meera see a therapist, but Meera dismisses this advice. She tells the doctor that her husband Henry provides all the emotional support that she needs.

Dr. Burke also mentions that she heard about the break-in, and she’s concerned this invasive crime might cause extra stress for Meera, who is very surprised that Dr. Burke knows about the break-in. “It’s a small town,” Dr. Burke explains. Meera will soon find out that there’s a lot she has to learn about Corallis.

Trust and uncovering secrets are recurring themes in “Intrusion.” Meera had made her appointment with Dr. Burke without telling Henry. And when Henry finds out about it, he gets annoyed, and he lectures Meera about how they shouldn’t keep secrets from each other. They have a little tiff over this issue, but it’s not an argument that causes a big rift in their relationship.

Meera’s and Henry’s lives change forever one night, when three intruders break into their home—and not everyone makes it out alive. The first sign that something is wrong is when there’s an electrical power outage in the home. Henry checks the power generator outside, and he sees that it has been deliberately damaged. When he goes back in the house, he’s shocked to find that Meera has been tied up by intruders, who are not in the room.

Henry quickly unties Meera. He gets a gun and fights off the intruders, who are three other men, and they have an attack dog with them. Meanwhile, Meera jumps from a second-floor balcony to go outside to her car to try to escape. She hears gunshots coming from inside the house. And the next thing you know, one of the men appears in front of her with the dog, but he’s shot and immediately killed by Henry.

It’s later revealed that Henry also shot the two other intruders inside the house. Two of the intruders are now dead, while the other has survived and is in the local hospital’s intensive care unit. Who were these three intruders? They all come from the same family: Paul Cobb (played by Antonio Valles) and his younger brother Colby Cobb (played by Brandon Fierro), both in their 20s, are the ones who were shot dead. Their father Dylan Cobb (played by Mark Sivertsen) is the one who is severely injured in the hospital.

Because Corallis is a small town with a small police department, Detective Morse is on this home invasion case too. He tells Meera and Henry that the Cobbs are related to Christine Cobb, a freshman at a community college, who has been missing for several weeks. Christine is Dylan’s daughter and the sister of Paul and Colby. After the police investigate the crime scene and take statements from Meera and Henry, it’s determined that Henry acted in self-defense, so he’s not charged with any crimes.

As upsetting and traumatic as this home invasion was, Henry still wants to go ahead with the housewarming party that he and Meera had planned for the following evening. Meera is reluctant to have the party, but Henry insists that the best way to deal with the trauma is to not let it disrupt their lives. Even though Meera is grateful that Henry saved their lives, she’s upset that Henry secretly had a gun that she didn’t know about until this home invasion happened.

The police are investigating why Henry and Meera were targeted for these two break-ins, but the police investigation is not enough for Meera. She begins looking for clues on her own, starting with what she can find around the house when Henry isn’t home. Meera suddenly acts like a private detective when certain clues lead her to some of the seedier areas in town. It isn’t long before Meera does some trespassing and break-ins herself, in her growing obsession to find out the truth.

There’s a scene at a trailer park where Meera is confronted by a local lowlife named Clint Oxbow (played Clint Obenchain), who catches her snooping around. It’s an example of one of many scenes in “Intrusion” that will have viewers giggling or groaning at the absurdity of it all. The clues in this mystery lead to a very predictable answer. By the time the big reveal happens in a very clumsily written and poorly executed scene, a lot of viewers who already had the mystery figured out will probably be very unimpressed. The cast members give very average or subpar performances.

Between the too-obvious clues and the short list of possible suspects, “Intrusion” offers very little suspense. The movie might have risen above its mediocrity if the main characters were more engaging. Unfortunately, Meera and Henry are so boring and emotionally awkward as a couple, viewers will have a hard time believing that Meera and Henry are supposed to be each other’s best friend. “Intrusion” gives everything the “blah” treatment, including the marital relationship and the mystery that are supposed to be at the heart of the story.

Netflix premiered “Intrusion” on November 22, 2021.

Review: ‘Redeeming Love,’ starring Abigail Cowen, Tom Lewis, Nina Dobrev, Logan Marshall-Green, Eric Dane and Famke Janssen

February 12, 2022

by Carla Hay

“Redeeming Love”

Directed by D.J. Caruso

Culture Representation: Taking place in Boston in 1835, and in San Francisco in the 1850s, the dramatic film “Redeeming Love” features a predominantly white cast (with a few African Americans and Asians) representing the working-class, middle-class and wealthy.

Culture Clash: A woman who was sold into prostitution when she was 8 years old meets a religious man who wants to marry her and turn her into a “righteous woman.”

Culture Audience: “Redeeming Love” will appeal mainly to people who like watching tawdry and sexist movies that preach that “sinful” women need religious men to save them.

Abigail Cowen and Eric Dane in “Redeeming Love” (Photo courtesy of Universal Pictures)

“Redeeming Love” is a tacky soap opera masquerading as a faith-based movie. The movie’s sexist and awfully preachy message is that an abused woman can overcome child rape, forced prostitution and incest if a religious man falls in love with her. It’s ironic that a movie that’s supposed to be about redemption has no redeeming qualities in how relentlessly tone-deaf and irresponsible it is in filmmaking and in depicting traumatic issues.

“Redeeming Love” (heinously written and directed by D.J. Caruso) makes all of its female characters exist for the sole purpose of fulfilling men’s fantasies. Even the so-called “love story” at the center of the movie is about a saintly man who wants his fantasy fulfilled of having his prostitute “dream girl” becoming his religious and dutiful wife. It’s obvious that the “Redeeming Love” filmmakers don’t want viewers to expect any other outcome.

Caruso adapted the “Redeeming Love” screenplay from Francine Rivers’ 1991 novel of the same name. Filmmakers who turn a book into a movie have the freedom to set the tone of the movie and make cinematic changes that are different from the book. The filmmakers of “Redeeming Love” (with Caruso at the helm) chose to make the female protagonist a mostly pathetic lost soul whose life can only be turned around if she just lets a religious man love her.

The “woman who needs saving” is named Angel (played by Abigail Cowen), who is the most popular prostitute at a San Francisco brothel called Pair-A-Dice. (“Redeeming Love” was actually filmed in South Africa.) The movie, which takes place over several years, opens in 1850 with a scene at Pair-A-Dice, where about 50 dirty and disheveled Gold Rush miners have gathered outside near the front porch for a lottery. It’s not an ordinary lottery. The winner whose number is chosen will get guaranteed time the next day with 23-year-old Angel, who is so in-demand, she doesn’t have time to “service” all the men who want to hire her.

The Pair-A-Dice’s cruel and greedy manager/madam, who only goes by the name Duchess (played by Famke Janssen), proudly oversees this lottery because she knows that Angel is the sex worker who makes the most money for the brothel. At different times in the movie, Duchess is seen physically abusing her young female employees, or ordering her henchmen to inflict abuse if she thinks these sex workers are being insubordinate. Duchess won’t pass up the chance to make money any way that she can from the brothel’s demanding customers.

Duchess makes this announcement to the crowd of men who have eagerly gathered to see Angel: “She’s done shagging for the day. She’s all worn out. I have plenty of other girls—Chinese, African, Spanish—dealer’s choice. But if you want Angel, you’ll have to come back tomorrow. And by guess or by gully, it’ll be your lucky day!” Get used to this type of cringeworthy dialogue in “Redeeming Love,” which is a cesspool of idiotic filmmaking.

Angel is not a “hooker with a heart of gold,” because she’s supposed to be “redeemed,” remember? Instead, Angel is very bitter and angry about her life. She can’t picture herself as anything but a jaded prostitute.

An early scene in the movie shows Angel and some of her co-workers talking about their unhappy and abusive childhoods. An Irish woman named Lucky (played by Jamie-Lee O’Donnell) goes into details about being beaten as a child. Mai Ling (played by Ke-Xi Wu), who is originally from China, says that her father sold her into prostitution.

Flashbacks to Angel’s childhood reveal how she ended up as a sex worker for most of her life so far. Angel’s birth name is Sarah Stafford. The movie flashes back to 1835, when Sarah (played by Livi Birch) was an 8-year-old living in Boston with her single mother Mae (played by Nina Dobrev), who is an outcast in this society because she is an unmarried woman with an illegitimate child.

Sarah’s biological father is wealthy Alex Stafford (played by Josh Taylor), who is married to another woman. It’s implied that Sarah was born from an extramarital affair. Alex doesn’t want to publicly claim Sarah as his child, but he has been sending money and gifts to Mae. He wants Mae, not Sarah, to have the money and gifts.

One day, something happens that has never happened before: Sarah meets Alex for the first time, when he comes over to visit Mae. Mae introduces Sarah and Alex to each other, with a look of hope and apprehension. At first, the meeting is cordial but awkward.

But the meeting turns sour when Alex finds out that Mae took the money he had sent and spent it on Sarah, who also got the gifts that were originally intended for Mae. Alex becomes enraged and begins physically assaulting Mae and verbally degrading her. Sarah witnesses this abuse, including when Alex shouts at Mae that he never wanted Sarah to be born and that Mae should have terminated the pregnancy.

Another flashback reveals that Mae eventually died of an unnamed illness when Sarah was 8. Sarah, who is now considered to be an orphan, ends up in the custody of a sleazy man named John Altman (played by Willie Watson), who tries to get a woman named Sally (played by Tanya van Graan) to agree to take care of Sarah, but Sally refuses. John then tries to sell Sarah to a ruthless Irish criminal named Duke (played by Eric Dane, doing a terrible Irish accent), who runs a brothel where girls are held as sex slaves.

Duke doesn’t just kidnap Sarah. He also orders his henchman Colin to murder John as soon as John brings an innocent Sarah to Duke. One of the first things that Duke says to Sarah after she becomes his captive is that she’s now going to be his “wife.” Disgusting. This is the scene where viewers find out that Duke is a pedophile. Another scene reveals that Duke rapes the girls who are held in his captivity and who are prostituted out to other men.

The movie eventually reveals that Sarah ended up in San Francisco because she ran away from Duke. But is it the last time she sees Duke? Of course not, because he never stopped looking for her, and this movie is filled with sordid melodrama. Duke eventually ends up in San Francisco in the 1850s. He still keeps underage girls as sex slaves. And you can predict the rest, including what happens to Duke.

It might come as a surprise that for all of its disturbing subject matter, “Redeeming Love” is actually not a movie with a rating that recommends a minimum age of 17 for appropriate viewing. It’s actually been rated as appropriate for kids who are at least 13 years old. That’s because there’s no nudity in the movie. And the movie’s sex scenes are very tame.

Still, any parents who decide to let their underage kids watch “Redeeming Love” should know that this is not a wholesome movie at all. There’s a scene where an adult Sarah/Angel ends up having her father Alex as a sex customer. He doesn’t know that she’s his daughter, but she knows exactly who she is. He only knows her as Angel, and he tells her that she looks familiar.

However, Angel/Sarah still doesn’t reveal to him that she’s his abandoned daughter, and she deliberately has sex with him. (This incestuous sex is not shown in the movie, but it is openly discussed.) After Alex finds out the horrible truth, he commits suicide. Based on Sarah’s reaction (she seems happy that her father committed suicide), it’s implied that Angel/Sarah knowingly committed this act of incest for revenge and with the hope that it would lead to her father killing himself.

The incest in this movie might be considered spoiler information for people who don’t want to know about any surprises in the movie’s plot. However, it’s important for viewers to know in advance how this so-called “faith-based” movie has some morally twisted subject matter whose only purpose is to make Angel/Sarah look as trashy as possible. It’s one thing to be a victim of child abuse, which is not the victim’s fault. It’s another thing to be an adult and try to get a parent to commit suicide by knowingly having sex with the parent. It’s absolutely reprehensible.

But if Angel weren’t so “morally bankrupt,” then it wouldn’t make her “male rescuer” look as noble. Michael Hosea (played by Tom Lewis) is a 26-year-old farmer who is first seen in the movie when he’s praying alone in a church and asking God to find him a romantic partner/future wife. “Maybe she likes fishing,” Michael says out loud as he prays. “Maybe she has long legs. You know the kind I need. I trust you,” Michael adds, as if God is in the mail-order bride business.

When Michael first sees Angel in a horse-drawn carriage on the street, it’s “love at first sight” for him. He tells a friend who’s with him that he just saw the woman he’s going to marry. When the friend tells Michael that Angel works at the Pair-A-Dice brothel, Michael is undeterred. It’s at that moment that Michael decides he’s going to “save” Angel.

The movie makes a big deal out of reminding viewers that Michael is a humble and poor farmer. But somehow, Michael has enough money to visit Angel several times, in an effort to court her and get her to marry him. He refuses to have sex with her during these visits, even though Angel offers sex to him as part of the transaction. Michael tells Angel that he doesn’t want to have sex with her until she falls in love with him.

The rest of “Redeeming Love” is a horrendous slog of the ups and downs of Michael and Angel’s relationship. There’s a time-wasting subplot involving Michael’s widower brother-in-law Paul Atherton (played by Logan Marshall-Green), who was married to Michael’s sister Tess, who died in 1847, when she was 21. Paul doesn’t approve of Angel being in Michael’s life. Guess who used to be a customer of Angel’s before Michael met her?

There’s also some tedious drama about fertility that comes to the forefront when a family called the Altmans end up visiting Michael’s farm. This clan includes John Altman (played by Willie Watson), his pregnant wife Elizabeth (played by Lauren McGregor), and their two daughters: Miriam (played by Tayah Ronen Abels), who’s about 14 or 15, and Ruthie (played by Tayah Ronen Abels), who’s about 10 or 11.

The performances in “Redeeming Love” are tonally off-kilter. Some of the cast members ham it up too much with their acting, while others seem bored. Cowen and Lewis (who makes his feature-film debut in “Redeeming Love”) have zero chemistry together as Angel and Michael. Angel is depicted as a fickle and flaky heartbreaker, while Michael is “too good to be true.” The filmmakers clearly want Michael to get most of the sympathy from viewers, even though Angel is the one who’s had the much harder life of being abused and exploited.

Everything about this movie is extremely condescending to women, to the point where it comes across as misogynistic. The female characters with the biggest speaking roles and the most screen time in “Redeeming Love” are involved in prostitution, when there should be a wider variety of women in the movie. That’s an example of Caruso’s sexist writing and directing for this film. “Redeeming Love” is trying to pretend that it’s an epic love story, but it’s really just epic trash.

Universal Pictures released “Redeeming Love” in U.S. cinemas on January 21, 2022. The movie is set to premiere on Peacock on March 7, 2022.

Review: ‘How It Ends’ (2021), starring Zoe Lister-Jones and Cailee Spaeny

July 21, 2021

by Carla Hay

Zoe Lister-Jones and Cailee Spaeny in “How It Ends” (Photo courtesy of MGM/American International Pictures)

“How It Ends” (2021)

Directed by Zoe Lister-Jones and Daryl Wein

Culture Representation: Taking place in Los Angeles, the comedy film “How It Ends” features a predominantly white cast of characters (with a few African Americans and Asians) representing the middle-class.

Culture Clash: Hours before an impending apocalypse, a woman in her 30s sees a physical manifestation of her 15-year-old self, and together they visit people they know to say their goodbyes in case they don’t survive the apocalypse.

Culture Audience: “How It Ends” will appeal primarily to people who are interested in “mumblecore” comedies that are self-consciously quirky in a way that will annoy some viewers.

The smugly oddball “How It Ends” looks and sounds like it could have been a pilot episode for a mumblecore sitcom rather than a compelling cinematic experience. In this time-wasting apocalyptic comedy, the end of the world is depicted as Los Angeles hipsters and weirdos acting as annoying as possible and thinking that they’re hilarious. You can see that on Hollywood Boulevard for free. You don’t need to pay money to see that in a movie as dull as this one.

Husband-and-wife duo Zoe Lister-Jones and Daryl Wein wrote and directed “How It Ends,” and it looks exactly like what it is: A movie that was rushed into production during the pre-vaccine COVID-19 pandemic, just so the filmmakers could brag about how they braved the pandemic to make this movie. Unfortunately, not enough time seems to have been spent on developing an interesting story for this repetitive and mostly empty-headed film.

“How It Ends” takes place in Los Angeles, just hours before an apocalypse is supposed to destroy the world. It’s never explained how people know the exact hour that this apocalypse is going to hit. But the characters in this movie are just way too calm about it, and they go about their lives as if it’s just another sunny day in California.

At least half of this movie just shows the two main characters walking from house to house, as they say goodbye to friends and assorted loved ones before the end of the world happens. Expect to see repetitive shots of people sauntering down a street as if they’re just out for a pleasant stroll before the apocalypse. And everyone they talk to just happens to be “quirky.”

The two main characters in the story are supposed to be the same person at different stages in her life. The movie opens with protagonist Liza (played by Lister-Jones), who’s in her 30s and with an unknown occupation, in her home on the morning before the apocalypse. There’s a teenage girl (played by Cailee Spaeny) jumping up and down on Liza’s bed.

Liza checks her voice messages and finds out that her friend Mandy (played by Whitney Cummings) has invited Liza to an end-of-the-world party happening that night. Liza tells the teenage girl, “Tonight, I want to get really fucking high and eat ’til I puke.” The girl in Liza’s house replies, “I can list so many problems with that idea. The first is: You’re out of weed.”

Who is this girl? Liza finds out this other person in her home is her 15-year-old self. Liza might want to roll on Ecstasy to get high, but the only thing rolling during this movie will be viewers’ eyes at the self-consciously twee absurdity of it all. Guess who’s hanging out with Liza for the whole movie? Young Liza, who’s somehow wiser and more emotionally intuitive than the older Liza.

It’s explained in the movie that Young Liza can only be seen on the last day before the apocalypse happens. And based on the advice that Young Liza gives her older self, Young Liza is supposed to embody hindsight. Young Liza also doesn’t have the emotional baggage that older Liza has, so she’s able to see things more clearly when it comes to unresolved issues in older Liza’s life.

Before Liza and her younger self go to the party, they decide to visit a series of people to say their final goodbyes. A lot of these half-baked scenes (many of them look improvised) are just filler. There are long stretches of the movie where it’s nothing but Liza and her younger self walking from place to place and encountering goofy, strange and usually very irritating people.

Wait, doesn’t everyone drive in Los Angeles if they can afford it? The movie comes up with a reason for why Liza and her teenage mini-me end up walking everywhere for more than half the movie: Liza’s car has been stolen. It’s the end of the world, so there’s no point in reporting the theft to the police. Will Liza get her car back though? That question is answered in the movie.

Most of the people whom Liza and her young self visit are the type of characters you would expect in a low-budget indie flick where the filmmakers think that it’s automatically supposed to be funny to see adults acting like immature kooks. There are the wacky neighbors in different homes, such as Derek (played by Bobby Lee), who’s a babbling stoner; Manny (played by Fred Armisen), a forgetful eccentric; and anxious Dave (played by Paul Scheer), who gets yelled at by another neighbor for not washing his recycling container.

And then there are a few people randomly performing in the middle of the street or on a sidewalk in this residential area, including a nameless stand-up comedian (played by Ayo Edebiri), who’s actually one of the few highlights of the film. Real-life singer Sharon Van Etten shows up toward the end of the film as a folksy singer named Jet, who plays acoustic guitar in the street to an enthralled audience of two: Liza and her younger self.

“How It Ends” desperately wants to be a uniquely modern film, but it uses the oldest and most cliché trope in a comedy starring a woman: She’s pining over a man because she wants him to be her romantic partner. In Liza’s case, “the one who got away” is Nate (played by Logan Marshall-Green), a former hookup whom she has deeper feelings for than she was willing to admit when he was in her life and when she emotionally pushed him away. Liza regrets shutting Nate out of her life, and she wants to see Nate again so she can tell him that she loves him before the end of the world happens.

Liza also has some unfinished business with her divorced parents Kenny (played by Bradley Whitford) and Lucinda (played by Helen Hunt), as well as her ex-boyfriend Larry (played by Lamorne Morris), who cheated on her when they were together. Liza visits all of them during this movie to tell them how she really feels. Viewers find out that she has major abandonment issues and has had a problem communicating her true feelings to the people who are closest to her.

But the best and funniest encounter that Liza has is with an estranged friend named Alay (played by Olivia Wilde), who’s just as neurotic as Liza is. Liza and Alay have a rapid-fire conversation where they talk over each other about what went wrong in their friendship (they fell out because Alay didn’t approve of Larry), and they call a truce—because of, you know, the apocalypse.

Alay eats a very decadent-looking cake during this conversation and says she’s a psychic. What does she see in Liza’s afterlife future? Alay says, “Timothée Chalamet and lots of dairy with no consequences.” Sounds like heaven for a lot of people.

If only “How It Ends” had more of this type of laugh-out-loud comedic scene with Wilde and Lister-Jones, because they have such natural and appealing chemistry with each other. Maybe they can co-star in another movie someday. Hopefully, it would have a better screenplay and more exciting direction than what’s in “How It Ends.”

But for every scene like the rip-roaring one with Wilde, there are five or six more scenes in “How It Ends” that are just so tedious and downright cringeworthy. For example, when Liza goes to her ex-boyfriend Larry’s home, it’s a retro ripoff with derivative ideas: She holds up a boombox (just like John Cusack famously did in the 1989 movie “Say Anything”), and then she quotes the chorus of Alanis Morissette’s 1995 hit “You Oughta Know.”

And there’s some self-pitying drivel, such as when Liza and her younger self have an argument with each other. Liza wants to ditch her younger self and continue on her own, because she thinks Young Liza doesn’t count as her real self. Young Liza shouts, “I do count! All your life, you’ve been licking your fucking wounds, when I’m the biggest wound of all!” Oh, boo hoo. Did anyone bring any tissues?

Lister-Jones and Spaeny previously worked together in the disappointing 2020 horror film “The Craft: Legacy,” which was written and directed by Lister-Jones and starred Spaeny as a teenage witch who joins a coven of other teen witches. The chemistry between Lister-Jones and Spaeny in “How It Ends” is more like older sister/younger sister as two different people, rather than entirely convincing as two versions of the same person. One of the takeaways from the movie is that Liza looks physically older than her younger self, but she hasn’t emotionally matured very much since she was a teenager.

Spaeny makes some attempt to mimic certain mannerisms that older Liza would have had in her teen years. And there are times that Liza and her younger self do things in snyc when they’re walking down the street. However, the movie looks like it was filmed so quickly that Spaeny and Lister-Jones didn’t have enough time to do work on body language and speech patterns that are more subtle and nuanced.

“How It Ends” is not so off-putting that it won’t find its share of people who will love this movie. There’s a very specific type of viewer who automatically thinks any movie that reeks of being self-congratulatory “quirky” is something that’s worth admiring. But for people who prefer their comedies to actually be funny and have a significant plot, you’ll have to look elsewhere, because “How It Ends” comes up very short in these elements and is mostly just a series of poorly conceived vignettes.

MGM’s American International Pictures released “How It Ends” in select U.S. cinemas, on digital and VOD on July 20, 2021.