The creators of “Shaun of the Dead” and “Hot Fuzz” (director Edgar Wright, and fellow writers Simon Pegg and Nick Frost) did something truly original with those two films satirizing the genre film while creating the depth it lacks. In their previous films (in order to kill all the bad guys) the characters must come to terms with who they are in the world and who they decide to be in the future.

With the creative team’s new film “The Worlds End” these themes are still present as Gary (Simon Pegg), Andy (Nick Frost), Steven (Paddy Considine), Peter (Eddie Marsan) and Oliver (Martin Freeman), attempt to finish a bar crawl they started over twenty years ago. When we first meet what Gary refers to as “The Five Musketeers” they are as young and ridiculous as teenagers should be: fighting, drinking, and making out in the “disables.” Twenty years later they have moved onto respectable careers that require suits and a certain level of snobbery (apart from Gary) who continues to relive his high school daze and is responsible for getting his old mates back together to complete the bar crawl. What starts out innocently (Andy prefers water over beer) turns into an apocalyptic fight to the death.

Initially the town’s dreariness seems normal for five friends coming from the city back to their home village. Hometowns tend to live in a time warped sharpened dreariness to those who left it behind. But what happens when the guy that used to sell you weed is wearing a suit? The line between expected adult stages and mediocrity is blurry for Gary and he is the first to detect the soulless mediocrity as robotic and untrustworthy. These robots are more Stepford Wife than Transformer: Zoloft 5.0 with a normalcy so frightening Gary is the only one fit to lead the annihilation. While the others want to leave town immediately Gary suspects this is what the machines want and continues the bar crawl, part “sophisticated” plan and vendetta for Gary who never seemed to accomplish anything substantial in his life perhaps until this moment. As the bar crawl continues the mates unravel what has happened to their town and themselves: propelled towards a destiny their younger versions would not understand.

Despite the new plot twist (the bar hopping scenes are as drab as a Dunkin Donuts / Subway combination eatery) nothing particularly funny happens, however some magic does occur in the third act. When Gary is faced with a younger version of himself, he must make a choice between the past or the future, passivity or humanity? With Gary’s decision the final act is almost another film entirely, becoming a post-apocalyptic comment on the modern-day reliance on technology.

Gary’s decision tells us that there are consequences to every action— Zoloft may ease our anxiety and fears—but if a horse’s head were to end up in your bed, would you Michael Corleone the shit out of someone or go back to sleep? The film would have been better served had Wright started where the third act began, when Gary chooses fears and anxieties over things made in the factory. If you love Pegg & Company go see this film, God knows we need more of them, but don’t expect anything mind blowing.