The fifth and least satisfying entry in the "Creature Features" film series, which loosely remakes titles from American International Pictures' '50s horror/science-fiction library, The Day The World Ended derives its title from a 1956 monster movie and its plot from The Twilight Zone and Invasion Of The Body Snatchers. Filmdom's umpteenth tale of a small town hiding a deadly, endlessly telegraphed secret, the film stars Nastassja Kinski as a child psychologist who accepts a post in a backwards small town located thematically between Twin Peaks and Children Of The Corn's spooky fields. Although subjected to icy glares by the locals, who don't much cotton to outsiders or what they uniformly refer to as "head-shrinkers," Kinski forms an immediate kinship with sensitive, comic-book-loving youngster Bobby Edner, who insists that his father is an alien. Kinski's newfangled manner of doing business attracts suspicion and distrust from the tradition-minded citizenry, and when bodies begin piling up, she emerges as the prime suspect. The Day The World Ended wastes little time establishing its central conflict, with the cell-phone-toting, authority-questioning, paradigm-subverting Kinski clashing instantly with a town whose xenophobia and closed-mindedness embody the worst aspects of the '50s. Kinski does what she can with a role that's exactly the sum of her character's leftist bumper stickers, and while Edner is nicely spooky as a little boy with a big secret, the rest of the town consists of shrill, broadly drawn caricatures. As the town doctor and Edner's ostensibly loving adopted father, Randy Quaid represents the film's only real stab at ambiguity, although by its climax, even he's reduced to yet another small-minded heavy. Max Enscoe and Annie DeYong's screenplay spells out its themes with capital letters and rows of exclamation points, at one point even requiring Kinski to shout, "Human beings are the real monsters!" The theme of outsiders being persecuted for a community's crimes has proven flexible and resonant in a variety of media, but The Day The World Ended adds nothing new to it, and lacks the imagination to do much more than string together clichés. Like many of the "Creature Features" entries, it's filled with references to '50s monster movies and horror comics, but its rebellious source material is ill-served by its reverent and unimaginative treatment.