I like sudden moments of fun gore as much as the next person and throwing in a well-used Tony Hale isn't a bad thing either. But when you cast Malkovich as a charismatic cult leader and make him dull, give Ayo Edebiri the plucky journalist role and give her pluck all to do and then make every new reveal just one more hollow ball of logicless silliness, topped off by a dumb ending that means nothing... well then, what's the point?
Also, fuck your stupid aspect ratio change.
Expertly staged and well performed but it feels clumsy in its structure and tone (there are too many subplots for a film focused on a character rather than the ensemble - the loan shark plot should just have been an inciting incident). Also feels like Ruffalo and Collette didn't land like they should have done, which is extra frustrating when interesting characters like Kai get dropped halfway through and themes such as the new colony's racism go unexplored. Even the…
This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.
This film is fucking terrible and the characters are fucking terrible and the acting is fucking terrible and the script is fucking terrible and then the penultimate scene reveals that Brosnan is literally God who is trying to cleanse the Earth of humanity before they turn it into CGI fire by selling them designer drugs, a twist that has had zero foreshadowing at all and you wonder if the film should be rated as five stars and then the two remaining characters are on a ferry and it ends and it's confusing. But, alas, overall fucking terrible.
As a 30-something father of two - both boys, one of whom a similar age to the son in this and the other who has the same name as the son - and someone who lost his father (though at 13 rather than 4) I knew exactly what I was putting myself through when I went to watch this. It seems perfectly designed to devastate me in the areas I feel the most sensitive, constantly hitting on my worst nightmares…
