I heard about “The World’s End” before I saw the trailer, where a British group of middle-aged childhood friends return home to attempt a legendary pub crawl of drinking 12 pints from 12 pubs in one night and somewhere along the way getting ambushed by zombies. Simon Pegg and Nick Frost already did that movie, “Shaun of The Dead,” where all the characters are trap inside a pub surrounded by zombies. “The World’s End” needed a better premise than that if I was going to hand over my hard-earned money.
And then I saw the trailer.
The movie, besides being about a legendary pub crawl, is a remake of the “Village of The Damned” movies. The 1960 British version and the 1995 American version were based on “The Midwich Cuckoos” by John Wyndham, where a remote village undergoes a mysterious event for 24 hours and every child-bearing female becomes pregnant with alien children who are born with pale complexion, blond hair, glowing eyes, great intelligence and telepathic powers. Like the cuckoo bird that lays its eggs in other bird nests, the children become a threat to humanity.
With glowing eyes, robotic behavior and blue ink for blood, the damned at “The World’s End” is looking pretty damn good.