The first half was strong enough. There’s the eerie and unsettling sense of nothing being quite what it seems, that and a suspicion of past traumas sinking their teeth into what joy life still has to offer.
For a while this balance is struck gracefully both by director and leads. Kravitz definitely has some knack for tone and Naomie Ackie is well tuned in, at least while the writing holds up. Unfortunately whatever subtlety the plot had going for it…
Like opening a prepared meal kit only to find some jokester swapped out the recipe for a torn and folded scrap of 8 1/2” x 11” with alternate instructions written in pencil in lower case. You know for a fact that someone other than HELLOFRESH was behind this but decide to go along with the gag anyway. The indications prompt you to throw away the meat and seasoning and eat the remaining vegetables as they are. You do as told and are left dissatisfied, imagining the meal that could have been.
Call it slow burn or whatever you will to me this is just dry trickery.
“You can’t indict the cosmos.”
There’s a gradient to how this movie plays, one that maneuvers through tropes from across the genre and just as soon abandons them for an all consuming cosmic horror.
A helluva trip I tell you what. The unsettling and straight up scary moments are kept fresh by a smart, suspenseful plot that flirts with predictability like a deke on your expectations. An unhealthy abundance of nightmare visuals is sustained, finding new purpose as the tone develops…
For me the whole 70s talkshow vibe felt phoned in. How you gonna do a found footage period piece shot on digital? Lazy. That hi res makes the straight to stream production quality look especially janky.
Nice to see dastmalchian’s getting work, but probably best just revisiting Prisoners. Even better idea; check Ghostwatch. Its a BBC broadcast from 30 years ago that goes for the same concept but actually done well. I get the sense these guys may have just ripped that off assuming no one’s seen it.
