Actor's scene study but not a movie

HEFILM

If you've ever taken an acting class where the instructor gives the actors some thin idea and then two actors go on about 4 times longer than is interesting--well that's the flaw in this film.

The two actors are good, Pattinson better than I thought possible, maybe even great but how much drunker can you get? How much crazier can you get?

That's all a good part of this story is about. There isn't any development just another scene just like the one before, two guys in a barely illuminated room getting drunk and babbling, just like the previous scene that lasted 7 minutes and just ended was.

The film feels like it's 2 and a half hours long. This is a misfire from a promising director. People argued if his previous film, The Witch, was really a horror film people may argue if this is even a movie.

I saw it opening night. The audience was small, two women walked out about ten minutes from the end.

Neither actor really has a character to play just a type and in lessor acting hands it would have all been even worse. Around the edges of the, 2 guys in a room being drunk and crazy sequences, there is moody B and W, purposely narrow framed atmosphere, The music and sound design are well done.

There are few real supernatural visuals and of these I just say, more mermaid please.

I guess it's more like THE LOST WEEKEND on an island than an island based supernatural story, just don't expect much in the way of story and gobs of exposition and talk talk talk, a movie that doesn't show and just tells.

It has various gross out bits that the director avoided in his first film and also lacks an ending--instead opting for film schoolish ambiguity and feels much much longer than it is. Slow and steady becomes laborious and also frankly though its visual tricks are impressive at first they really don't develop much and the lack of color also weighs the film down, though really the script is what just isn't there.

It feels like it's written by the two brothers while on cocaine, lots of focus on details that don't add up, energetic over-concentration on small details and no perception of anything else. No building momentum exists to bring it all off as a story of as a feature film. A few bits of intentionally dark humor get lost in the general grime as do the few vivid Lovecraftian tentacles. Really a let down this film is.

score 3/10

HEFILM 26 October 2019

Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw5213892/