Casey

I absolutely love Yorgos and this was by far my most anticipated movie of the year. And I 1000% need a second watch before I solidify my thoughts on this, but for now I will say two things: 1) The character of Don and Aiden Delbis’s performance absolutely floored me. He’s the heart of the movie, and seeing a character with autism played by an actor with autism in a movie like this was really cool. I’d delve into this character more but it’s hard to talk about what I wanna say without spoilers, so for now I’ll leave it at that.2) People have been saying this is Yorgos’s most accessible film and plays like a broad comedy…in what universe? Am I crazy? This was so bleak, like way bleaker than his two most “accessible” films (Poor Things/The Favourite). Genuinely confused by people saying it’s his most accessible, but maybe I’ll feel different on another watch.  Anyway, I will formulate all of my many thoughts after watch 2. Definitely a lot to unpack here!!!!!!

This is a really well-written script about a tragically insufferable character, who Ethan Hawke plays with a lot of charm. And Andrew Scott gives a fantastic supporting performance here, and I really liked Bobby Cannavale too. I didn’t adore the film completely, but I thought it was very well made and was a good time. 7.5/10

It’s good and I like it, but I feel like if you gave Yorgos this premise today it would result in a much better film

What in the Stranger Things was that? Was the pitch for this Stranger Things meets The Shining?? I didn’t like the first one, and I didn’t really like this one either. It has some cool things going for it and there are some good ideas here, but the execution on a writing level is just so bad that it really kinda ruins whatever is worthwhile here. Scott Derrickson is a good director and makes some good visual choices (the dream sequences being shot as if it’s grainy found footage, or how he shoots the shots inside the phone booth), and the choice for a snowy setting and to lean more into the supernatural elements work well, but the script is SO godawful that it makes everybody in the movie look kinda bad. There are at least 50 moments in the movie that could become memes based off how cringey and not well written it was. Especially for the Gwen character, who becomes the lead of this but is honestly insufferable to watch throughout the whole movie because of the atrociously terrible lines they give her, from the truly awful and cringey insults like dingus or dinosaur dick, to them shoehorning in the word “radical” or other 80s slang and talking about Duran Duran so you know it’s the 80s. We get it! This film also does a thing I can’t stand where they inexplicably bring back a dead villain for a sequel (which I don’t inherently mind), but then on one hand they say things to basically hand-wave it away like “you didn’t think it was over did you?”, “You really thought that’s how our story would end?”, or “you of all people should know death is just a word”, but then on the other hand they introduce lore reasons for the character to be back that ultimately become crucial to the plot….and at that point you’re just insulting my intelligence lmao. Just bring them back (because we all know you need to for there to be a movie in the first place anyway!) and stop drawing attention to it! Or if you do, just hand-wave it away and don’t attempt to rationalize it as if that makes it make any more sense! Let it not make sense!!!! And then you have the missed opportunity to actually deal with the repercussions of the first movie for Finny, and to deal with his PTSD in a real way. Instead, the movie opts for a surface level “trauma” exploration and sidelines him from being the lead because they don’t really know what to do with him.  So yeah. It’s ultimately a well directed film with a pretty effective score and atmosphere, but the writing left so much to be desired that I didn’t really care ultimately. Which is disappointing because I thought it had a lot of potential. (It was very cool though to hear Subways of Your Mind in the film. I remember when that was just The Mysterious Song and it was awesome for them to put the song in a movie set in 1982 lmao)