In un giorno la fine

It's the usual outbreak story, made way worse by the fact that the main character is unbereably detestable, selfish and stupid, from beginning to end. You don't find yourself rooting for him AT ALL. On the contrary, you end up hoping he's gonna be taken by the zombies.

Well-directed, well-acted and technically accomplished, but the film loses itself somewhat as a result of the screenplay, especially in the second half where the attacks begin to feel repetitive and the action fails to progress as swiftly as we'd like.

Synopsis: Mega-congested Roman roads, a broken-down elevator and an invasion of zombies. Three hellish situations are meted out in quick succession by new 33 years-young director Daniele Misischia, who was previously a cameraman and second-unit director for the Manetti brothers. And it is, in fact, Marco and Antonio Manetti, the golden brothers of Italian genre cinema (Love and Bullets [+] being their last success) who produced The End? [+], an apocalyptic horror film set almost entirely in a lift. It was presented for the first time at London's FrightFest in 2017, before travelling to the last Rome Film Fest, and it will soon be showing in Italian cinemas from 14 August onwards.

I was kinda pleasantly surprised with this little gem of a movie that managed to keep me intrigued throughout its entire course. Don't get me wrong, this is no REC, but Italian cinematography did quite alright with The End?

So we can either compare it with Rec, 30 days later or any other zombie horror for that matter, or we can take it for what it is and try to enjoy it. Acting was ok on my part, plot easy to follow-decent and some nice kills here and there, even tho they are simple zombie deaths.

I want to say that it was a nice way to occupy around 90 minutes of my time and if I do find other such productions I'll surely keep an eye on them.

Cheers!

Really nice film by Daniele Misischia, well-played and directed with strong acting, compelling storytelling, and lively action scenarios between the dead and staff. Add in the paranoia and rage that comes with being stuck in a elevator, and you got an thrilling horror movie. Alessandro Roja was especially good and ticked all the boxes asked of him as the arrogant and obnoxious office worker who thinks he is God's gift to women, only to be rejected following a fling and then stuck in an elevator as those around him perish to the dead, leaving him largely alone except for a few colleagues along the way and an officer who would perish, leaving him having to find his way out, which he eventually does. Lovely!

I read the bad reviews of this Italian zombie flick and decided to still give it a try because it sounded interesting. I'm glad I did. I am not easily impressed and I watch so many movies of all sorts of genres (in fact, that's all I do with my spare time) and I must say that this is one of the best films I have watched this year. I found that I was not tempted to hit the fast forward button and actually wanted to see what happened at the end, when I usually don't care and switch off out of boredom with most of the films I watch.

The End provided high tension, sure it was predictable but it is just a zombie movie, what else would you expect? It was not boring at all, I felt like the performances were good but most of the dialogue was unnecessary. One man trapped in all elevator arguing with people on his phone and through an intercom does not provide much dialogue, and it was just padded by constant use of foul language which I found rather annoying. I was reading English subtitles when I watched this and I thought, I could have still enjoyed the film even without the subs, since the dialogue is not really important. What makes the film good is the tension, the scary zombies, and for those who like gore, there is some very bloody scenes.

It is very hard to find a good horror movie these days. We are bombarded with so much trash that it makes me feel like giving up in searching for good ones, but finding The End? was worth the effort. It may not be one of the greatest zombie flicks of all time, but it certainly is not one of the worst either. I say, give it a go.