02nd May2012

‘Humanity’s End’ Review

by Paul Metcalf

Stars: Jay Laisne, Rochelle Vallese, Cynthia Ickes, William David Tulin, Kari Nissena | Written by Neil Johnson, Michael Jonathan Smith | Directed by Neil Johnson

Humanity’s End is a film that just confuses me, it’s got a plot that is pretty forgetful and bad special effects and if it relied on them then it would be no good. For me it would have been a total disaster if it was not for one character, Derasi Vorde.

Taking obvious inspiration from Star Trek, Battlestar Galactica, Babylon 5 and countless other sci-fi shows and films, Humanity’s End deals with the extinction of the human race and what appears to be the last known humans in the universe. A huge alien army are trying to hunt them down and destroy them. I guess Derasi Vorde is the last man in the universe meaning that if the human race is going to survive and reproduce they have to rely on him, which is a shame for the women because he’s a total ass.

Saying he is a total ass is not a bad thing, because this is what confuses me really. Derasi played by Jay Laisne comes from the Bruce Campbell School of acting; in fact you could call him Ash in Space (taking the Ash character from Army of Darkness, not his slightly more wimpy Evil Dead character). He’s sexist, a smart ass and offensive to everybody around him, in fact you could call him the stereotypical misogynistic man. He’s the last person you would want as somebody the human race has to be dependent on and in fact that is probably what makes him work as a character. He’s one of those guys that is that much of an ass you should hate him but he always seems to get away with it.

The big problem with Humanity’s End though is that it just fails to live up to what it wants to be. It’s meant to be an epic sci-fi film with the characters battling to save the human race from possible destruction, where it ends up on being boring and bad CGI interspersed with much more interesting scenes between the human characters. The aliens don’t have enough of an impact on the story and you end up remembering more of what Derasi does than recalling just what happened in the film. This is a shame really because for fans of sci-fi (as I am) we do have a high tolerance for bad CGI when the storyline is strong enough. Give it a believable fantasy feel stick in some conflict and we’ll be happy, or of course there are the other more militaristic fans who will say it’s the worst thing ever because it’s not (this is where you insert their favourite sci-fi show). I think it’s safer to get off that subject now though or risk the backlash caused by actually saying people can be like that.

So in short yes, Humanity’s End is not that good but it’s at least saved by the main character that gets away with so much because he is the last man in the universe. He has amusing one-liners and manages to be a total ass but in the end he save’s the film from being a total failure. Not sure I can recommend it to watch really, but know that if you do choose to then there is at least one thing to save it.

Humanity’s End is released on DVD and Blu-ray on May 21st courtesy of Koch Media.

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