End Day (2005)

	Also Known As: -
	Year of first release: 2005
	Director: Gareth Edwards (Monsters, Godzilla, Rogue One: a Star Wars Story)
	Actors: Bill McGuire, Jay Melosh, John Oxford
	Country: GB
	Genre: SF, Drama
	Conditions of visioning: 26.02.2017, VOD, 40" TV screen.
Synopsis: On his way to a particle accelerator in New York, Dr. Howell goes through different realities in which different catastrophes hit the world.
Review: Cheap and clumsy are the words that quickly came to my mind when watching this 48-minute docu-drama TV-movie produced by the BBC. The story is titillating: demonstrators protest against a particle physics experiment that they fear can create a black hole (inspired by the story around the European LHC that discovered the Higgs Boson, see Particle Fever), and the main characters defends on TV that we have more chance to be hit by a large asteroid or experience a super-volcano, end we then see those alternate realities unfold with in the background real-life professors explaining a bit the physics behind. The super-volcano scene is edited out from the Netflix (and American) version but can be found on YouTube. The special effects are barely watchable and the families drama not even, the TV-movie clearly suffers from a lack of money and the lack of conviction of the actors, so why watch it at all? Because it is the first screenplay and realization of certain Gareth Edwards that went from Special Effects to directing the recent blockbuster Rogue One: a Star Wars Story in just three movies (after Monsters and Godzilla). Besides some Easter eggs in the movies (a theater showing Groundhog Day a movie with a similar plot idea, the names Edwards and Moxon - the editor - on the side of a boat...), you get delighted with hints of his future style, like the action scenes being shown on a small TV instead of full-screen, and the camera quickly looking away to focus on characters. It is funny to think back of some shots re-used directly in his future successes. And since End Day he also improved a lot his development of characters. That must have been a very precious and useful experience in his life.
Rating: 3 /10