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A massive downgrade from Alex Garlands career
Review:
Alex Garland is one of those filmmakers I will always go and watch. His last few projects have been nothing short of incredible with Ex Machina, Annihilation and recently his show Devs. All of which exploring pertinent contemporary issues of science fiction or at the least interesting ideas often reserved for the page not the screen.
I could go into why that is (Science fantasy makes more at the box office than true hard sci-fi hence hard fi like Star Trek becoming more Science Fantasy as it sells BUT that's a story for another day!) but it's credence to Garland that he's managed to make sci-fi films with a concious budget that explore great concepts.
It's announced he's doing a horror movie set in the west of England (My original home) and it's tarring two of my favourite actors. He's directing and writing for none other than A24 another favourite studio of mine.
Oh my, how did this go so wrong? This film feels like an amateur attempt at a first movie that is so shocking after what he's produced in the last few years. This is not the smart, well structured, paced Garland we knew. This is a clumsy, plodding, entirely metaphorical Garland that left the screen I was in thoroughly perplexed when the movie suddenly cut to credits.
There's one sequence in this film (no spoilers) that is vaguely visually interesting that felt more like Arrinofksys Mother with how it tries to shock before people open their phone to tweet a few minutes after seeing it "The most shocking movie of the year!". But it's simply not. It's a movie that's spending far too much time delivering long monologues on the relationship of satan/odysses.
A24 have a habit of selling a horror in their trailers and delivering an interesting character exploration (Midsommar, Witch etc) which I adore. And this does not sit along side those. This felt like a first draft script that got a budget during the covid lock downs with a 2 person cast that needed about 3 more runs thru on revisions. As this is incoherent and it's such a shame.
Would you recommend this to other users? I don't. Even fans of Garland should give this a skip as this is a real drop in quality for him. If you love macabre visuals that will be talked about "Wow that was gross" there's 20 mins worth of this in this film. So, come for those if that's your cup of tea.
Otherwise, avoid it. It's just not good horror film making.
Rating(1-5):
A massive downgrade from Alex Garlands career
Review:
Alex Garland is one of those filmmakers I will always go and watch. His last few projects have been nothing short of incredible with Ex Machina, Annihilation and recently his show Devs. All of which exploring pertinent contemporary issues of science fiction or at the least interesting ideas often reserved for the page not the screen.
I could go into why that is (Science fantasy makes more at the box office than true hard sci-fi hence hard fi like Star Trek becoming more Science Fantasy as it sells BUT that's a story for another day!) but it's credence to Garland that he's managed to make sci-fi films with a concious budget that explore great concepts.
It's announced he's doing a horror movie set in the west of England (My original home) and it's tarring two of my favourite actors. He's directing and writing for none other than A24 another favourite studio of mine.
Oh my, how did this go so wrong? This film feels like an amateur attempt at a first movie that is so shocking after what he's produced in the last few years. This is not the smart, well structured, paced Garland we knew. This is a clumsy, plodding, entirely metaphorical Garland that left the screen I was in thoroughly perplexed when the movie suddenly cut to credits.
There's one sequence in this film (no spoilers) that is vaguely visually interesting that felt more like Arrinofksys Mother with how it tries to shock before people open their phone to tweet a few minutes after seeing it "The most shocking movie of the year!". But it's simply not. It's a movie that's spending far too much time delivering long monologues on the relationship of satan/odysses.
A24 have a habit of selling a horror in their trailers and delivering an interesting character exploration (Midsommar, Witch etc) which I adore. And this does not sit along side those. This felt like a first draft script that got a budget during the covid lock downs with a 2 person cast that needed about 3 more runs thru on revisions. As this is incoherent and it's such a shame.
Would you recommend this to other users? I don't. Even fans of Garland should give this a skip as this is a real drop in quality for him. If you love macabre visuals that will be talked about "Wow that was gross" there's 20 mins worth of this in this film. So, come for those if that's your cup of tea.
Otherwise, avoid it. It's just not good horror film making.
Rating(1-5):
