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The world’s end: film review.

This latest genre sendup from Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg also stars Nick Frost, Paddy Considine and Martin Freeman.

By Jordan Mintzer

Jordan Mintzer

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Simon Pegg World's End - H 2013

LONDON — Teaming up for another round of boozing, buddying and B-movie parodying, director Edgar Wright and actor Simon Pegg find themselves getting apocalyptically plastered in their clever and hilarious sci-fi sendup The World’s End . At once a Big Chill -style old-pal reunion story and an Invasion of the Body Snatchers homage doused in beer and bad-boy humor, this third collaboration (after Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz ) between the duo and co-star Nick Frost is a fast and funny action-comedy undercut by moments of midlife nostalgia — the whole shebang held together by terrifically wrought performances, especially from the punch-drunk Pegg.

Released by Universal in the U.K. a month ahead of its U.S. bow, the film should see sizable homeland returns from fans anticipating the final leg of co-screenwriters Wright and Pegg’s cheekily titled “Three Flavours Cornetto” trilogy (named after the ice cream cone that makes cameos in each movie — though you’ll never guess where they put it here). Stateside, it should play as a gratifyingly light digestif after a long and grueling summer of CGI slaughter, though returns there might fall short of Sony’s similarly titled and themed This Is the End .

The Bottom Line A pub crawl turns into an apocalyptic pub brawl in Edgar Wright’s hilarious sci-fi action comedy.

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For those familiar with the team’s previous efforts — the first of which took on the zombie genre, the second the cop-caper comedy — the antics here might not necessarily seem new, though they are consistently smart and fresh, switching up the bromancing characters played by Pegg and Frost while bringing back supporting stars Paddy Considine ( The Bourne Ultimatum ) and Martin Freeman ( The Hobbit ), with veteran Eddie Marsan ( Sherlock Holmes ) joining the gang for the first time.

And while things get a tad buckled town in mayhem and special effects throughout the film’s busy final reels, Wright spends enough time sketching out his mischievous middle-aged men so that their journey — across 12 pubs, dozens of pints and several broken bodies — feels worthwhile and even meaningful for a few of them.

After a grainy flashback reveals five high school friends trying and failing to do “The Golden Mile” pub crawl in their peaceful northern city of Newton Haven, we cut to 20 years later, where their self-appointed leader, Gary (Pegg), is wallowing about the good ole days in group therapy, where he hatches the idea to complete the challenge once and for all. He quickly tracks down divorced architect Steven (Considine) and milquetoast real estate broker Peter (Marsan), who are willing to join him but only if corporate lawyer Andy (Frost) — who bears a major grudge against Gary and has been on the wagon for years – agrees to tag along.

Soon enough, they all wind up back home, and Wright gets much comic mileage out of these early sequences, with Gary dressing and acting like he’s still in the 12th grade as his friends look horrifyingly on, comforted by the fact that they didn’t turn out as bad as he did. But just as things come to a head among them, heads literally start rolling during a bathroom fight between the crew and a band of local thugs, whose easily detachable appendages and buckets of blue blood reveal them to be far from human.

Caught in a city populated by freaky robotlike denizens (with headlight eyes that recall both the three Snatchers films and the John Wyndham adaptation The Day of the Triffids ), the boys see no other choice than to continue their bar-hopping until they can escape, though one suspects that Gary really is more interested in binge-drinking than in coming out alive. Meanwhile, the cold-turkey Andy soon turns into the group’s chief boozehound, and Frost’s quick transformation winds up providing some of the film’s drop-dead funniest moments.

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But it’s Pegg who truly steals the show, playing an archetypal winner-turned-loser who’s as embarrassing as he is touching — the type of guy who everyone worships until they grow up and get a life, leaving him inevitably behind. His character also gets some of the movie’s best lines, referring to a glass of water as drinking “f—– rain,” and claiming, in a riotous late plea, that “it’s our basic right as humans to be f— ups.”

Despite the gradual f/x overkill in the final segment, Wright and DP Bill Pope ( The Matrix ) manage to dish out plenty of visual wit, making the many bar brawls, torn limbs and exploding heads both colorful and creative and leaving enough room for their characters to develop amid the chaos. Production design by regular Marcus Rowland amusingly pokes fun at the faux-retro look of modern pubs, while sharp editing by Paul Machliss keeps up the pace despite a somewhat stretched 109-minute running time.

Tipping its hat to all the late-’80s/early-’90s music that Gary and friends grew up with, the soundtrack is chock-full of hits by Blur, Pulp, The Soup Dragons and The Happy Mondays, with a major shout-out to gothic rock band Sisters of Mercy — featured in a song, a vintage T-shirt and a rather shameful chest tattoo.

Production companies: A Focus Features presentation in association with Relativity Media, of a Working Title production in association with Big Talk Pictures Cast: Simon Pegg, Nick Frost, Paddy Considine, Martin Freeman, Eddie Marsan, Rosamund Pike Director: Edgar Wright Screenwriters: Simon Pegg, Edgar Wright Producers: Nira Park, Tim Bevan, Eric Fellner Executive producers: James Biddle, Edgar Wright, Simon Pegg, Nick Frost, Liza Chasin Director of photography: Bill Pope Production designer: Marcus Rowland Costume designer: Guy Speranza Music: Steven Price Editor: Paul Machliss Special effects supervisor: Chris Reynolds Rated R, 109 minutes

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The World's End Reviews

All of the performances are fantastic. Simon Pegg and Nick Frost, who have carried this trilogy, are incredible and they know how to play off each other.

Full Review | Original Score: A | Aug 16, 2024

Like what Wright, Pegg, and Frost did for horror and action, this third entry into the Cornetto Trilogy similarly lampooned while also paying tribute to the sci-fi genre, while also delivering plenty of heart.

Full Review | Original Score: 5/5 | Sep 20, 2023

[The movie takes] an exhausted genre and suffusing it with energy, wit, and technical bravado, but perhaps most importantly, three-dimensional characters whose serious interpersonal relationships extend the cultish material beyond its usual limitations.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4 | Aug 25, 2022

This is more ambitious than Wright and Pegg’s previous pairings, daring to go a little darker and take on the arrested adolescence and the frustrations of adult accommodation...

Full Review | Aug 19, 2022

Another hour of drunken renewed bonding would have been wonderful, but the bright idea swerve of the alien invasion takes over and it all goes off the rails.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Jun 26, 2022

In many ways, Gary is a more tragic extension of Pegg's titular character in Shaun of the Dead, a slacker who never got his sh*t together and is running out of time to do so.

Full Review | Sep 12, 2021

A fantastic end to a terrific, largely unrelated trilogy.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4 | Dec 16, 2020

In every instance that a meaningful exchange attempts to emerge, it's swiftly suppressed with loudmouthed antics and ludicrous skirmishes.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/10 | Dec 4, 2020

Benefits greatly from the undeniable chemistry between Pegg and Frost.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.0/4.0 | Sep 27, 2020

The World's End is comedy gold... underscored by heavier themes: What is the true meaning of friendship, how does being overly reliant on technology and consumerism affect us and how much of our inner child should we give up in order to become an adult?

Full Review | Jul 18, 2020

Raucous, crude, and funny, it's also touching and crushes genre boundaries with a deft touch.

Full Review | Original Score: A- | Jul 8, 2020

It is appropriate to say that Edgar Wright, Simon Pegg and Nick Frost have closed one of the most bizarre British trilogies of recent times with 'The World's End'. [Full review in Spanish]

Full Review | Original Score: 7/10 | Jun 25, 2020

In some ways, THE WORLD'S END is the most interesting of the films retconned into a thematic trilogy by Edgar Wright and company. Dirtier, more melancholy and more poignant than the earlier entries.

Full Review | Feb 13, 2020

Sharp, smart and funny, [Edgar] Wright has played this to a tee.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Nov 21, 2019

Shaun of the Dead mocks zombie movies and is a hell of a zombie movie. Hot Fuzz picks on buddy cop movies and is a great buddy cop movie. The World's End ridicules apocalyptic invasion movies and serves as a great apocalyptic invasion movie.

Full Review | Original Score: A | Aug 27, 2019

The World's End displays an ambidextrous wit that's uniquely English, and proves that not all Hangover farces have to be dumb and ugly.

Full Review | Aug 7, 2019

All the actors are not only superb, but through all the mayhem, hilarity and terror, the leads build multi-dimensional roles we grow to care about and genuinely hope survive.

Full Review | Jul 31, 2019

The film relies far less heavily on pop culture reference and cheap Comic-Con leaning fan service, in favor of a deeply personal tale of friendship and growing up.

Full Review | Original Score: 7.5/10 | Jul 16, 2019

Pegg holds it all together, going all-in as the man-child who may be mankind's last hope for survival. It's a take-no-prisoners kind of performance that may turn off some, but I found to be quite entertaining.

Full Review | Apr 9, 2019

The World's End is thoroughly likable, a little bittersweet and sometimes gleefully, cartoonishly fun. Any movie with a ridiculous robot fight in a pub is, on some level, all right by me.

Full Review | Feb 25, 2019