Comments about stories getting reused; demonstrates it
Intentionally (and successfully) tedious, with dialogue that cruises just below the threshold of “interesting” throughout. That’s pretty much a death-knell for a dialogue-driven thriller. If you’ve thought seriously about the veracity of religion and the comfort of belief for any significant amount of time, you’re going to be waiting for the movie to catch up to you.
Even still, a slow-burn like this can be saved by enjoyable or challenging revelations at its conclusion. An hour into the film, I exclaimed, “FINALLY something interesting.” But that mid-moment was the peak of my appreciation, as the movie chose the simpler, dumber, and more familiar route at every turn, culminating in a very unsatisfying finale that is far less profound and original than what I was expecting. You, the viewer, are imagining more interesting zigs at every zag, wondering if it will “go there.” The answer is no. It was giving House on Haunted Hill or Diabolique, with a highly contrived plot - Barbarian-core, as film twitter will soon call it, but less interesting in both directions. There’s some quote out there about the value of the journey over the destination. Well, what if the journey is boring af, and the destination is disappointing af?
As mentioned earlier, I spent most of the film ahead of the characters. However, when the film wants to vault the characters ahead of you, it needs to montage the explanation for the characters’ motivations because the about-face is so unearned and inexplicable.
To further this flogging, the movie also very clearly feels like two female characters written by two men.
Maybe I’m overseasoned with skeptic content, but I’m pretty perplexed by this movie’s warm intellectual reception. Worse yet, I’m annoyed by the brand of criticism that it’s facing too! As I scroll through Letterboxd reviews, it’s either, “four stars + joke review“ or “Isn’t atheism insufferable???”
Like, don’t make me like this movie as a “bit” in spite of me not liking it!
Comments about stories getting reused; demonstrates it
Intentionally (and successfully) tedious, with dialogue that cruises just below the threshold of “interesting” throughout. That’s pretty much a death-knell for a dialogue-driven thriller. If you’ve thought seriously about the veracity of religion and the comfort of belief for any significant amount of time, you’re going to be waiting for the movie to catch up to you.
Even still, a slow-burn like this can be saved by enjoyable or challenging revelations at its conclusion. An hour into the film, I exclaimed, “FINALLY something interesting.” But that mid-moment was the peak of my appreciation, as the movie chose the simpler, dumber, and more familiar route at every turn, culminating in a very unsatisfying finale that is far less profound and original than what I was expecting. You, the viewer, are imagining more interesting zigs at every zag, wondering if it will “go there.” The answer is no. It was giving House on Haunted Hill or Diabolique, with a highly contrived plot - Barbarian-core, as film twitter will soon call it, but less interesting in both directions. There’s some quote out there about the value of the journey over the destination. Well, what if the journey is boring af, and the destination is disappointing af?
As mentioned earlier, I spent most of the film ahead of the characters. However, when the film wants to vault the characters ahead of you, it needs to montage the explanation for the characters’ motivations because the about-face is so unearned and inexplicable.
To further this flogging, the movie also very clearly feels like two female characters written by two men.
Maybe I’m overseasoned with skeptic content, but I’m pretty perplexed by this movie’s warm intellectual reception. Worse yet, I’m annoyed by the brand of criticism that it’s facing too! As I scroll through Letterboxd reviews, it’s either, “four stars + joke review“ or “Isn’t atheism insufferable???”
Like, don’t make me like this movie as a “bit” in spite of me not liking it!
5
