Within the last year, two films—Lars Von Trier’s Melancholia and Abel Ferrara’s 4:44 Last Day On Earth—speculated about the looming apocalypse, but from the fixed perspective of two or three characters with limited access to the outside world. It was a smart approach, because it kept the filmmakers from having to speculate too much on the chaos beyond their borders, because it’s hard to do so without seeming banal and reductive. Lorene Scafaria’s oddly winning romantic comedy Seeking A Friend For The End Of The World is often banal and reductive, and tonally schizophrenic in gauging the last three weeks before an asteroid plows into Earth. And yet tonal schizophrenia seems about right for human beings who react all sorts of ways to The End, from suicidal despair to plane-going-down orgies to small gestures of friendship and love that salvage some last comfort or meaning for the days before extinction.
