The End of The Fxxxing World is a 2017 series from Netflix based on the graphic novel created by Charles S. Foreman.
The premise centers around a young man named James (Alex Lawther) who thinks he is a psychopath, putting his hand in a deep fryer and killing small animals. James wants to take his obsession a step further and kill a live human being. This is when Alyssa (Jessica Barden) enters the story. She is a rebellious youth who doesn’t like her parents or any of her peers and takes an immediate interest in James, not knowing any of the danger that we see. After knocking out his Dad and stealing his car. James and Alyssa go on a road trip to find her real dad.
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The use of narration to get inside the heads of both our main characters is really quite effective. We find out that these characters are not so different from each other. While watching these two characters bond, there are moments when both of them are not as we perceived them to be. What I thought was going to be a pitch black comedy about a psychopath killing his first victim turns into a road trip of two lost people finding for the first time ever, a connection with someone.
Lawther and Barden are great as the two main characters and their adventures reminded me a lot of the movies Badlands and Moonrise Kingdom. Both feature young kids who run away from the adult world to create their own. But in those stories, the two characters start off in love and in this they do not. Alyssa may have started the relationship with James, but she doesn’t love him right away. She just does it as an act of rebellion. Same thing goes for James who just wanted to see what it was like to kill a real person. The way these two find a bond with each other, doesn’t go the traditional route you think it would
The show goes from being a dark comedy to one that is kind of heartfelt and romantic, without ever losing its bite. Based on the premise, I feel that most of you won’t believe me, but the film does have some great small moments that give the story real emotional weight.
That’s not to say the movie doesn’t have its bits of shocking violence and gore because it does. It’s the type of real violence I haven’t seen since Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer. Maybe not to that extreme but pretty close, especially when we have a character like James who in all accounts should have turned out to be a dangerous psychopath.
The End of the Fxxxing World is only 8 episodes and each one is about thirty minutes long. You should have no problems getting through this series in one night. Being that it is so short there are some plot developments that end a lot faster than they should. Sometimes an episode will have a big problem get introduced. Only to have it get resolved a few scenes later. This is still a good series and one that I do recommend.