The best thing I can say about Goodbye World is that it is trying to be different and I can't fault a film for that when we have so much of the same thing being regurgitated. As a novel (I'm not sure if this is based on one or not) I think this would be great because over the course of a nice long book it could do a much better job of establishing the characters. In the film you have a group of very unlikable, incredibly shallow, stoner idiots who aren't doing much of anything. They try to weave a mystery about who caused the apocalypse but essentially they're trying to create this coming of age/reunion/Big Chill type vibe with a background set at the end of the world. This might have almost been better without the apocalypse because really it doesn't play a part in the story at all. It doesn't even matter to this group of idiots. Why they chose to put a little girl in the film (who vanishes and is absent from the latter half of the film) is beyond me. Her parents and all their childhood friends are drug using, alcoholic idiots who find no redemption in this disaster. I did some potential in some of the story arcs but they spend so much time building up nothing that by the time the story comes out in the end its too far gone.
I do think the cast is talented but I don't think the script gives them much. Its a big cast but the characters are really awful people and hard to watch. Adrian Grenier is perpetually brooding, angry and slamming things around and never gets to impress leading the cast. Ben McKenzie, who I have always been a fan of, is decent in his role and has a few good scenes but I wanted to see more of the interaction between Grenier and him because I think there could have been a lot of story there. Kerry Bishe is probably the best of the girls but she spends so much time getting high and acting like a 14 year old girl that I begin to understand Grenier's constant anger at the world. Caroline Dhavernas doesn't really get any good moments until nearly the end of the film. Honestly most of the cast doesn't really impress until the last fifteen minutes. In fact the last fifteen minutes of this film are the best. Suddenly we see what this movie should and could have been but instead we have to sit through an hour plus of this group of people sitting around wasting their lives. Gaby Hoffman, Remy Nozik, Mark Webber, and Scott Mescudi are nearly completely wasted in the film and are nothing short of pointless. Hoffman gets her best scene in the end and her character could have been actually a focus of the story.
Essentially there is a good idea here buried under an extremely poor script, poor direction, poor editing and even worse character development. Denis Hennelly proves my point that I always say about a director doing his own screenplay. He has little experience behind the camera and his writing needs a lot of work too. It was really bizarre because up until the last twenty minutes of this film I would have probably given it a 2 or less but then all of it comes together and culminates in some really great, intense and emotional scenes but the apocalypse still has very little purpose to this. This could have made a great TV Series as well but there just simply wasn't enough time and effort put into this to make it worthwhile. It ends up being a total miss and even the last scenes aren't worth forcing yourself through this indie dud. 5/10
I do think the cast is talented but I don't think the script gives them much. Its a big cast but the characters are really awful people and hard to watch. Adrian Grenier is perpetually brooding, angry and slamming things around and never gets to impress leading the cast. Ben McKenzie, who I have always been a fan of, is decent in his role and has a few good scenes but I wanted to see more of the interaction between Grenier and him because I think there could have been a lot of story there. Kerry Bishe is probably the best of the girls but she spends so much time getting high and acting like a 14 year old girl that I begin to understand Grenier's constant anger at the world. Caroline Dhavernas doesn't really get any good moments until nearly the end of the film. Honestly most of the cast doesn't really impress until the last fifteen minutes. In fact the last fifteen minutes of this film are the best. Suddenly we see what this movie should and could have been but instead we have to sit through an hour plus of this group of people sitting around wasting their lives. Gaby Hoffman, Remy Nozik, Mark Webber, and Scott Mescudi are nearly completely wasted in the film and are nothing short of pointless. Hoffman gets her best scene in the end and her character could have been actually a focus of the story.
Essentially there is a good idea here buried under an extremely poor script, poor direction, poor editing and even worse character development. Denis Hennelly proves my point that I always say about a director doing his own screenplay. He has little experience behind the camera and his writing needs a lot of work too. It was really bizarre because up until the last twenty minutes of this film I would have probably given it a 2 or less but then all of it comes together and culminates in some really great, intense and emotional scenes but the apocalypse still has very little purpose to this. This could have made a great TV Series as well but there just simply wasn't enough time and effort put into this to make it worthwhile. It ends up being a total miss and even the last scenes aren't worth forcing yourself through this indie dud. 5/10