The End Of The F***ing World

 The EndOf The F***ing World

Based on the comic book series by Charles Forsman, "The End of the F...ing World" sees two 17-year-old outsiders, James and Alyssa, embark on a road trip to find her estranged father, who left home when she was just a child. James, who is convinced he's a psychopath, has decided it's time to graduate from killing animals to something bigger -- and he already has a target in mind. Alyssa, the embodiment of existential angst, feels like she doesn't fit in at her new school despite being quite popular. Together, they get caught up on a trail of violent events that grow increasingly more ominous as their quest progresses.

“I’m James,” a skinny British kid announces via voice-over in the first scene, as the word “JAMES” splashes across the screen in cockeyed red letters. “I’m 17, and I’m pretty sure I’m a psychopath.”

James (Source : Netflix)

The concept of The End of the F***ing World—a heartwarming, quirky romance between a budding psychopath “James” and a truculent, wounded teenager “Alyssa’’ , up the pitch-black humor of British alternative comedies with the visual punch of an auteur-driven indie film.  In the first few episodes, Lawther plays James as almost comically disturbed, barely blinking, and staring fixedly in the distance when Alyssa, after their first meeting, tries to kiss him. His inner monologue, heard in voiceover, is mostly to-the-point (“Alyssa was new. She’d started that term. I thought she could be interesting to kill”). Barden’s Alyssa is more complex: She rampages through situations, shooting her mouth off at every opportunity and alienating everyone she meets, but her inward thoughts convey how secretly vulnerable she is. “I’m going whether you come with me or not,” she tells James when she announces her plan to run away, before immediately thinking, “Please say yes.”

Alyssa  (Source : Instagram)

Entitlement imbues The End of the F***ing World with an ambiguously retro vibe. The series is set in England, in an unspecified town outside London, but the film has a notably American aesthetic. On their journey, James and Alyssa drive through wooded landscapes and vast open roads, emulating classic heist. They break into a house that’s a masterpiece in mid-century modern design, in the middle of nowhere. When they decide to change their appearances, Alyssa raids a thrift store and finds a baby-doll dress for herself and a Hawaiian shirt for James, adding to the offbeat visual overtones, and both teenagers have smashed their cellphones, which amps up the analog feel of the show. The accompanying music adds emotional texture to the story.

 

(Source : Netflix)

What carries the series, though, is the connection between James and Alyssa. Their escapades as they seek out Alyssa’s real father are unfailingly madcap and sometimes sinister. Still, they forge a genuine emotional bond that’s only slightly undermined in early episodes by James’s thoughts about murder, and Alyssa’s observations that sometimes James seems like he’s “a bit dead.” And the world around them is just as frightening, absurd, but weirdly charming.

In under three hours, it creates a world that’s aesthetically distinctive, highly stylized, and fully formed, telling a love story that you wish would go on, even though it probably shouldn’t.

The editing of The End Of the F***ing World is actually brilliant as well. There is a distinctive haphazard way that the scenes are presented in the series from the beginning. And soon enough, we get so used to this pattern that we don’t mind the sudden cuts and shifts. In fact, in the early episodes, the background score and the editing are hugely responsible for building the psychopathic feel of the show and contrastingly, later, as the tone changes, both the editing and sounds are accordingly adapted.

(Source : Netflix)

The title tells us pretty clearly that this show won’t have a happy ending. But even in its tragic moments, there are still glimmers of loveliness in The End of the F***ing World. You just have to be patient, and watch closely, to fully see them.

A review of The End of the F***ing World would be incomplete without talking about its mind-boggling closing scene. While it is difficult to curb the feeling of wanting more from this extremely dark yet heartwarming world, Alyssa and James’ crimes have to catch up with them some day and second, we can’t imagine the series getting any better than this.

In less than three hours, The End of the F***ing World creates a neatly-sketched world that is distinctively dark in its styling yet tells a love story that we wish would.

(source: Netflix)

 

Genre : Comedy-drama