These Final Hours

These Final Hours is an Australian drama/thriller set in Perth that asks, how would you spend your final hours on Earth?

With only 12 hours until the end of the world, James (Nathan Phillips) is travelling to an end-of-the-world party, but opts to rescue an 11-year-old girl (Angourie Rice) and help find her father instead.

Quintessentially this is a pre-apocalyptic road-trip film. The performances are strong and stand out – Phillips and Rice work well together.

Stereotyped hoodlum characters, typical in this style of film, aid in painting a very grim picture of society as the end approaches, with haunting scenes of death, drug use, graphic violence, and sex, that may cause many to turn away.

Adversely, the film looks cheap and the screenplay is flat, lacking the edge and momentum mandatory for films in this genre. A captivating and cleverly edited trailer successfully promotes what is ultimately a somewhat uneventful and mediocre film. (MM)

** 1/2 /5