“The World of the End” could have been an interesting character study. Instead, it’s just a film about a young lady named Madison (Carolyn Siegel) who loses her job and then has some sort of personal crisis. I guess we are to feel some sort of sympathy for the character, who lays out a five step plan with how to deal with the “disaster,” but it is hard to muster up any kind of feelings whatsoever because the character is so bland. And besides, it sounds like she lost a clerical job. She’s twenty-five. I think she can rebound.
There’s a lot of time in this short film spent worrying about how her family will react to the devastating (sarcasm intended) blow, and then a real crisis comes up, which sort of puts Madison’s situation into perspective. The only problem is that viewers never needed this life change put into perspective in the first place. It’s a waste of time for the audience, and I had a hard time figuring out why this film was ever written.
I was expecting some serious socio-political introspection in Adam Bertocci’s film. Why else make it? I got none of that, though. Instead, I sat through a young woman fretting about telling her mom she lost her job. (The phone call she makes to her parents is unintentionally hilarious. She won’t leave a message about the nature of her call, instead telling them she had better deliver her news in person. If I were a parent I’d immediately think pregnancy or cancer. Not that she got laid off from a job a step above being a temp.) In other words, this is a wasted effort about a growing segment of society that has no idea how to handle the harsh realities of a world that could care less about their cell phone bills. Who wants to see a film about that? Not this reviewer, and I can’t imagine anyone else wanting to, either.
