Tag: Review

Halloween Kills (2021)

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Quick Synopsis: Michael Myers fucks shit up

Is it possible I’m wrong? I mean, it happens often but usually in a different way than it is for this. Normally with horror films I end up bored and disliking it, but everybody else loves it. This is the opposite, I watched it the first chance I got, and I was amazed throughout. I was watching it and just kept being amazed at what I saw, I loved the plot, the deaths, the universe. I loved the continuation of the story, especially how it felt more like a part 2 than a sequel.

And then I went online and saw all the negative responses to it. A lot of people dislike it. I feel this is another Psycho 2 situation. I prefer that film more than the original because it did something different with the typical formula. It felt like a natural progression of the story and characters, it felt like a real examination into “what happens with this character after that event?”. This felt very similar. It’s an examination into, not so much how characters react to the situation, but how society and a town reacts. It feels more like a psychological study than the first one does (well, technically the second one, but you know what I mean). As much as I do love Halloween (2018), it doesn’t really do much new. This does, with this you feel the horror isn’t just the people on camera at any time, you feel that the horror is going through the whole town. The whole thing feels like a natural progression that leaves me very excited for the next stage.

The main cast is mostly the same, there are a few new additions. I’m not sure whether they were in previous ones or not (the only ones I’ve seen are the two called Halloween), I think one of them is the character who was played by Paul Rudd in one of the earlier ones. In this one he’s played by Anthony Michael Hall, best known from his appearances in many John Hughes movies back in the day. He is weirdly terrifying in this. His heart is in the right place, but from the moment you see the look in his eyes when he says “Evil dies tonight” you know some awful shit is going to happen. That’s what this film does well, it creates a sense of tension that the whole thing feels like a powder keg, and you can see multiple potential sparks that can set it off. You’re never quite sure when it’s going to happen, but you know that when it does it’s going to be big, and it’s going to be awful, and it is.

It does have an issue with “awkward middle film” syndrome. Because you know there’s a third film happening there are certain things which lack tension. You know certain characters will survive because they have to be in the third film. It does pull off an insane third act though, featuring some absolutely BRUTAL kills. That’s to be expected though if you just look at the bodycount. Michaels kills A LOT in this film, and some are more horrific than others. There’s one in particular which says a lot about who Michael is in this film. Sometimes in these films he’s been known for his efficiency, he goes in, kills, leaves. In this there are moments which are basically cold-blooded torture. He’s not killing to achieve anything, he’s killing just to kill. There’s one in particular which is just harrowing to watch, he stabs a woman with a light fixture then, whilst she’s still alive, he grabs her husband and stabs him to death multiple times as she watches. It’s vicious, it’s horrible, it’s……evil.

That’s what Michael is in this film, pure evil. He’s not someone you can root for (which happens a lot with long-running franchises), he’s just pure evil. There are times when the townsfolk aren’t much better, the moment they chase a random person to his death is particularly bad.

So yeah, that’s it. Everybody else hates this film, but I like it. So who are you going to trust, people who do this for a living and know what they are talking about and are familiar with the entire history of the franchise, or me? The answer is simple

Prisoners Of The Ghostland (2021)

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Quick Synopsis: A captured bank robber (Nicholas Cage) is tasked with retrieving a Governer’s adopted granddaughter/sex slave in this Japanese-inspired western horror. At one point his testicles get exploded.

Is Nicholas Cage picking films based almost entirely on how fucking strange they are lately? I mean, I’m all for it if it produces stuff like Willy’s Wonderland. That was fun and strange and a one of a kind movie. This was, I dunno. I should like this film, it’s an interesting mesh of genres (western and horror/sci-fi), both of which lend themselves to going weird and out-there. But I just didn’t mesh with this for some reason. I think it’s because when I was watching it all I could think was “I would much rather be playing this and experiencing it that way”. When you do a mash-up of genres like this does you need to do it in a way that highlights certain things from both genres which best suit the story you’re telling. The story should be driving the genres, but this feels like it was done the opposite way. It feels like they got the genres, made them into cars, drove them into each other and then made a script based on the result. The film itself is too surface level, there’s nothing underneath the obvious what you see. No meaning, no deep beauty to it. It feels so in debt to its stylistic forefathers that it doesn’t seem to have an identity of its own. Outside of “modern Japanese western” it’s incredibly flat and one dimensional. Visually it’s not that exciting either. I mean, it’s got a lot of colours, but they just don’t POP. If you look at a film like Blade Runner and how they use colour it’s a visual delight. In comparison this just looks like a Lite Brite a few minutes before the batteries die.

I really don’t have a lot to say about this, because there is nothing to say. I won’t remember this film for too long after I saw it. Maybe this is partly because I watched it at the “wrong” time. I feel this is supposed to be watched with friends while drunk, cheering and hollering at the screen. I watched it on my own in the middle of the day. But I watched Come True in a similar situation and that pulled me in.

The issue is that there’s nothing particularly wrong with this film (although Bill Mosely’s performance seems kind of wrong, he never feels like a character who is in control of the situation, he always looks too nervous and jumpy), there’s just not much I could find to particularly be too invested in. It just exists. It’s the cinematic equivalent of a big mac, fine in the moment, but I would never really go out and hunt it down except if I was drunk. A film like this should not be quite as boring as this one is.

The Boss Baby 2 (2021)

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Quick synopsis: No, I’m not summing up this up. It’s too stupid, watch the trailer.

I’ll start off with the obvious. This is not a good movie, for most of it it’s not even watchable. Fundamentally it suffers the same flaw as the first one where the general concept isn’t buyable. It’s not like Toy Story where you can imagine toys coming to life. There is no anchor of reality to ground yourself in. We know the reality of babies, everybody alive was at some point a baby, so there is no truth to the lies this film tells. This specific plot doesn’t work either. So they have to become babies again to infiltrate a school, right?

1) they need to be babies.

2) Why does it have to be them?

I’ll answer both of those questions: because we, the audience know the main characters as babies and we need to see them like it again. It only happens because this is a film, more specifically a sequel. This film establishes that Tims daughter Tina is a boss baby too. So why didn’t she do it? She wouldn’t need a special potion that turns her into a baby briefly, she already is one. She has all the connections, and she already knows what to do and what to look for etc. The film says her real mission was to bring the two brothers back together. What do they care? The brothers are initially brought together by a faked voicemail, but it’s so obviously fake that it wouldn’t actually fool anybody.

Now onto the biggest issue I had with this film: it takes place a MUCH longer time after the first one than most sequels (I’d estimate about 20 or 30 years after). Instead of focusing on Tim as a kid again. We are introduced to his kids. This means that the returning characters have completely different characterisation, because they’ve aged 30 years since the last time we saw them. So really we don’t know these characters. This goes for the relationships between characters too. It’s based on his relationship with his brother. But it’s completely different from the last time. Because the last time we saw these characters they first met and had a frayed relationship, then started to get on with and love each other. This takes place when they are estranged. But we never got to see them in a decent relationship really (except for like 10-20 minutes at the end of the first one). So the entire thing is based on relationships and a past which we haven’t been privy to. It’s like we’ve missed the back story we need.

There is some consistency for the characters, but it just makes the film worse. Tim is still talking to his toys and imagining them coming to life. That made sense in the first one because he was a child, and that’s what children do. But now he’s an adult, so it just comes off as kind of weird. He has kids and yet still has the mentality of one. This is what happens when you have a sequel featuring characters who are the same, but are at fundamentally different stages of their life.

It signposts the jokes way too much. There’s one in particular which you can guess about 3-4 seconds before it happens. It doesn’t try to subvert it in any way, it plays the joke completely straight. The original film was released 4 years ago, so the audience who enjoyed the first one would have matured, but this film hasn’t. It’s like it’s aimed at people who only discovered it in the last year. 4 years is a very long time in childhood. The difference between a 5 year old and a 9 year old is immense in terms of taste and likes.

Now onto the good. Jeff Goldblum is perfect in his role. Kind of. His voice is perfect for the character, and it looks perfect for him in still images, but he moves in such a jerky way (think standard annoying youtuber) that it is distracting and weird. It also does that thing almost every film does with holograms where it makes them glitchy and broken. No matter how much of a genius a character is in a film, they can never create holograms which actually work. The movement doesn’t match his voice either, he has the voice of someone who either stands still, or paces back and forth, not jump around all over the place. Also, his character is not a boss baby, just a baby who is intelligent, so why does he have an adult voice?

Other things on the plus side: the line “they’re going to send in the Baby Seals” made me laugh a lot. And there’s a musical interlude which is sweet, creative, and incredibly heartfelt. It’s everything the rest of the film should be but isn’t. It’s almost Pixar-esque. Such a shame the rest of the film doesn’t come anywhere near.

The Last Duel (2021)

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Quick synopsis: Ridley Scott directed film about the events leading up a duel between Sir Jean de Carrouges (Matt Damon) and Jacques Le Gris (Adam Driver) after Jacques is accused of raping Sir Jean’s wife (Jodie Comer).

I had heard mixed things about this. Some people had said it’s incredibly boring and muddled, some have said it’s an incredibly powerful piece of cinema. In my opinion it’s a mixture of both. It’s an incredibly powerful piece of cinema, that’s quite boring in parts. There are moments where it goes on too long, the ending in particular probably could have been trimmed. As it is the final shots are Jean and Marguerite riding out slowly on horseback through a crowd as Jacques’ body is stripped naked and strung up. It then skips forward and we see Marguerite sitting in a garden happy with her child. We’re then told she lived happily (well as happily as a woman could in those days) for another 30 years. So did we really need to see her in the garden? It’s not even mentioned on the wikipedia page for the film, that’s how unessential it is.

There are also a few moments I feel could have been longer (which in a film that’s 2 and a half hours long, is not something I thought I’d say). There’s a moment where a character essentially punches someone to death. The film cuts away just after he stops punching. Personally I’d have left it for a little bit longer so the full weight of the moment lingers with the audience, you would get a chance to sit and be truly f*cking horrified in what you’ve just seen.

That’s most of my criticisms of this film. They’re not “this film did this badly and it should feel bad”. It’s almost all personal preferences. All the flaws are “yeah that’s not right TO ME”. There’s one moment which I think exemplifies this. The rape itself. We first are aware of it from Jean’s POV, where he comes home and is told by his wife what happened. We see nothing. We then see it from Jacques’ POV, and it’s pretty clear that he did rape her. She’s a little bit more flirty than she is when we see the reality, but not enough that a normal person could justify it. That’s because we do see it. If the film stayed at looks which could be seen as flirtatious, made it so her looks back as she ran away had a more seductive air to them, then cut away as soon as the bedroom door closed, we would have a moment of ambiguity. We would wonder if it did happen as she said it, especially if they played up the pregnancy angle and made it seem like people would know the child isn’t her husbands. It would also mean that when we did see the truth, it would horrify us more. As it is we’re sitting there mentally comparing it to when we saw it play out earlier. We’re not lost in the moment, we’re thinking “okay, last time we saw this scene she stayed still, but this time she moved quicker”. Again, personal preference, and not a direct criticism of the film.

The way they this film is shown is unique, it’s really interesting to see how different people view certain events. There are a few moments where I would have liked to have seen from different angles but are restricted to just one. Not needed, but it would have been nice to get the truth about certain events we see.

It may be set in 1386, but there are some moments which are depressingly relevant in modern times. There’s a moment where people say that it’s impossible to get pregnant from rape, that a woman has to orgasm for pregnancy to occur. An idea that is, yes, woefully outdated, but also one that American lawmakers still believed in 2012, actually let me rephrase that: one that American dickheads still believed in two-thousand and fucking twelve because they’re cunts (for those asking why I didn’t censor that, but I did censor f*cking earlier I should clarify what the house style is for swear words: whatever I feel like at that particular moment is the rule).

So in summary, I feel you probably should watch this, but there’s a high chance you’ll be bored shitless. But you should admire parts of it.

Minari (2020)

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Quick synopsis: A Korean family move to an Arkansas farm. I’m really underselling it.

Confession time: I nearly deleted this off the list of films I need to watch this year. Actually there’s no “nearly” about it, I did delete it. I just felt might not be for me. Might be too “arty” and slow. Only added it last month when I thought I’d give it a shot. I was a minute in and thought “I immediately regret my decision”, the decision to delete it, I mean. The fact I denied myself something so beautiful as this for so long is not great. I can’t even explain why the opening is good. It’s literally just the family driving to a new home, no dialogue, just soft music playing. But there’s something about it that’s just so damn cosy and warm that you immediately love it.

I can’t really go into the plot, mainly because it’s not important. There was one character point that made me panic about how the film was going to end, that it was going to get really depressing and bleak as it went on. It didn’t do that. There are moments of emotional frustration, where you just want to grab the characters by the shoulders and start shaking them until they realise what they should do/say. But the character moments aren’t “well I need to do this for the story to develop”, they are believable mistakes for humans to make. This is probably because it’s a semi-autobiographical film, based on the upbringing of writer/director Lee Isaac Chung. It’s a deeply personal story and one that’s told beautifully.

It says a lot about people too. There’s a moment where the family go to church. The other adults are really friendly, and the other kids are kind of dicks (the phrases “why is your face so flat?” and “I speak koraen: jing jang ying low” are both spoken). But then it twists it almost immediately and the kids start getting on once they’re corrected, something as simple as “my face isn’t flat”. Whereas the facade the adults are putting on starts to slip and they start to feel really disingenuous and condescending. It’s incredibly smart and so well done.

It’s not perfect though. The sister character could have been fleshed out better. It feels like if you took her out then it wouldn’t effect the film at all. She’s the only character who doesn’t seem to have their own arc and agency within the film and I had to check she was actually in the film and I didn’t get this film mixed up with another one. But nope, she’s in it, just really ineffective.

It’s weirdly difficult to talk about this film because it didn’t feel like a film. You weren’t sitting there focusing on the story or the acting. You don’t so much watch this, as experience it. It reminded me very much of Nomadland. Which is good, as I loved that film. I should probably do them as a double bill at some point. They’re both really good films with similar colour schemes.

All of this was a long way of saying, watch this film.

The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It (2021)

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Quick synopsis: Paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren help a man suspected of murder who claims he was possessed by demons.

It would be unfair of me not to preface this with the knowledge that I am not happy with the very existence of this film. Fine, you can do schlocky horror films about demon possessions, but this is based on a real event. And not just “these people claimed their house was haunted, here’s what happened”. It’s a murder. Someone died, there are people in that town who remember that event. The victim probably still has living relatives so to trivialise the murder seems super sketchy. It’s presenting as fact the notion that the murderer was possessed by demons. I’ve had similar issues with these films in the past. They uncritically present the “yup, what this family said was definitely true” side without exploring whether they were in fact bullshitting or not. Fun fact, when someone called the Warrens out on their BS, they responded the problem with the skeptics is “they don’t base anything on God”. That’s their default position, so it’s already coming from a place of bias.

So, what about the film itself? This is technically only the third, but there has been numerous spin-offs too so it’s more like the 8th. I have seen all except the last Annabelle film, and I can barely remember anything from them except for bits and pieces from the second one (probably because I reviewed it). I remember enough to say that these films have no idea about escalation, every single case is presented as “the most deadly they have ever seen”. This has happened a lot now and I’m starting to get bored of it. There doesn’t seem to be an endgame, it’s all the same thing again and again.

This film itself? It’s not great. As I’ve said, I can’t remember too much of the previous ones, but this has been the worst of the main series by a long way. Part of it is the directing, this is the first of the main three not directed by James Wan (who was probably busy with Malignant), so it’s lacking the one thing you can normally depend on for this franchise: a slick style that glosses over a lot of the cracks the series has.

Without Wan’s directing to distract you, the flaws are more apparent. It’s just not an engaging story. It’s muddled with no clear idea of what the focus is. It’s also weirdly frustrating at parts. Shying away from things you actually want to see. The murderers lawyer points out that claiming demonic possession as a defence is a stupid idea, the Warrens tell her “come to our house for dinner and we’ll show you the evidence, we’ll prove it to you that demonic possession is real and dangerous”. It then cuts to the courtroom. So we don’t see what convinced her. What a fucking cop out.

There’s another moment which was a little odd. The film has a doctor utter the words “Yes it was a heart attack, and not a mild one I’m afraid”. Something about that line seems weird and I can’t put my finger on it. It just feels like it’s downplaying it somewhat, a really weird sentence that sounds wrong somehow.

There’s a moment where they go straight from “we need to find him, he’s in danger” to Blondie. I was going to criticise the use of Blondie as the segue as it was an incredibly bad use of it and ruined a tense line. But the director makes up for it by using it for a REALLY good jump scare, bringing the music WAY down until the character is approached and bringing it up again. Masterful and shows what the director can do. But then they use it in another scare and just slow it down, and it’s not as effective. There are some good directing ideas here, but not enough to sustain it to the end.

And lets talk about the ending. They convince the court of the possession so the guy only gets manslaughter. Everybody cheers. We then get text telling us what happened and it’s like “Yaaay this person who definitely killed someone got released after serving only 5 years, and didn’t receive any medical help.” This is supposed to be a happy ending. Knowing that a killer is now living a happy life is not a happy ending to me. Especially since the “he was possessed by demons” robs him of taking any responsibility for it.

The Addams Family 2 (2021)

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Quick Synopsis: The Addams Family drive across the country, Wednesday thinks she’s not a proper member of the family, somewhere there’s an evil scientist.

I have seen the first one of these, but I didn’t review it for this site. If I had it would have just been me shouting the word “nooooooooooooo” for a few minutes. I had multiple issues with that film, none of which have been really fixed in the sequel. There has been a slight improvement in character design. The first one had almost every human character look more like a bratz doll, every step making it look like they’re going to break an ankle. The human characters look a bit more human here, but there’s still something wrong about them.

The casting is still wrong, but also weirdly right. Charlize Theron and Oscar Isaac would be absolutely perfect in a live action version, but having just their voices feels wrong, especially when the way the characters look doesn’t really seem to suit them. None of this is helped obviously by the casting of the live action ones in the 90s being near perfect. Occasionally a film has one or two perfect castings, those ones had the fortune to have the perfect Gomez, Morticia, Wednesday, and Uncle Fester. So any castings will be compared to those, and are unlikely to come off favourably.

Some castings are just the wrong choice. Nick Kroll as Fester for example is just not a good choice. Know who would have been a better choice? Danny DeVito. It would be much less annoying a voice than Krolls is. Also, as much as I love Chloe Grace Moretz, her Wednesday leaves a lot to be desired. Instead of coming off as calm and calculated, she just comes off as flat and bored.

As you can tell by now, I did not enjoy this film. I feel part of that is because it never FEELS like an Addams Family movie. It feels like an animated movie starring them. Like it’s trying way too hard to be cool, way too much music aimed at a younger audience. And yes, I do know the 90s series had MC Hammer in it, but that was mainly restricted to “a song played at some point”. It didn’t do with him what this film does with Snoop Dogg as Cousin It: have him dropped into the plot by private jet, do absolutely nothing, get lifted off again, and then appear at the end to do a rap. You could remove his scenes entirely and you wouldn’t notice they’re not there. They add absolutely nothing to the narrative.

Well I say narrative, it’s mostly “stuff happening”. The plot (that Wednesday might not be an Addams) is predicated almost entirely on Fester juggling with the babies in the hospital, causing a possible mix-up. But the villain, how does he know this? He doesn’t. All of the things that convince Wednesday that she doesn’t belong to the family are things out of the villains control (not just the juggling babies, but also a DNA hair test Wednesday performs coming up “no relation” because Gomez wears a wig). Unless those things happen, the plot doesn’t move forward, but he has no idea those things will happen, he just lucks out. The screenplay is based almost entirely on you not thinking about it for a second, and just hoping you’ll go along with the lazy nature of it.

Great films inspire you to ask questions. The only question I have after this film is: Why?

Don’t Breathe 2 (2021)

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Quick synopsis: A blind veteran has to defend a young girl from people who want to kidnap her.

I went into this knowing there was a chance I wouldn’t like it. I didn’t like the first film, mainly because I saw it as just a group of terrible people being awful, I had nobody to root for and my main hope was that the winner would be a gas leak under the house.

It was clear that the reaction to The Blind Man from the first one meant that a sequel would turn him into an anti-hero. It’s a bit weird as the first film tried so hard to make him hateful so when you’re watching this that is always in the back of your mind. It’s like in Cruella where no matter what she does you know she’s capable of attempting to skin dogs alive. Only for it to be comparable to this she would have had to have kidnapped and raped them too, now I haven’t seen the original animated 101 Dalmatians, but I’m fairly sure she didn’t do that (maybe in the original book).

This feels like it’s trying very hard to give him redemption. It even has a character say

“you’re a bad man, a man who’s done terrible things. At least you think that, I’m the same”.

No, but he actually is evil. He’s not an anti-hero. The previous film, again, had him forcibly impregnate someone. I’m all for morally ambiguous characters but there is a limit. There are some evils you can’t be redeemed from, and what he did is one of them. It would be like having a film called Hitler 2: Electric Boogaloo, where it turns out he faked his death and now runs a dance club in Argentina where he helps youths stay out of trouble and fall in love.

Now, onto this film itself. It’s……it’s so forgettable. I would have rather it be bad than be as bland as this is. It’s nothing. It’s a film which if I didn’t make notes I would REALLY struggle to come up with a summary at the end of the year. The characters aren’t that memorable, the situation is cliche, and most of the dialogue seems very first draft.

On the plus side, it’s quite well directed in parts. This is the directorial debut of Rodo Sayagues, and he already seems experienced in it. The best parts of this film are due to him. There’s a tracking shot in this which belongs in a much better film. There are a few issues with cohesion and clarity, but for a first-time film this is incredibly strong and great showcase for what he could do.

Stephen Lang continues to do a great job as the lead, but he still reminds me too much of Kevin Nash for me to be entirely comfortable.

Overall, it’s hard to recommend this, but I do say as someone who went into the film with expectations to dislike it. Maybe if it was a standalone film I would have been more appreciative of it. But as it is it’s so incredibly nothing that it’s hard to overcome my expectations.

Malignant (2021)

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Quick synopsis: Madison (Annabelle Wallis) is a pregnant woman living in Seattle with her abusive partner. She starts receiving visions of people being murdered and………..actually you know what? A synopsis would not help you that much here. Just watch the trailer, then watch the film. It’s fucking strange.

I watched this on the 25th September, and I still haven’t properly gathered my thoughts about it. It’s something unlike anything else you will see this year. One of the most unique films and I’m still not sure how it got made and given a wide release. It’s unlike anything else I’ve seen this year, but also has a weird sense of familiarity. It’s the kind of film I may not buy, but I do want to see again just to experience it.

It’s a really strange film, incredibly uneven. There are moments where it looks slick as hell and incredibly well produced, but then moments where it looks really cheap and kind of silly. I have never both enjoyed and been disappointed at the same time as much as I have with this. Some of it feels like it’s a tribute to horror movies of time past, there’s a definite air of the giallo horror movies of the 70s and 80s, but also very reminiscent of the early horror movies of Peter Jackson or Sam Raimi. It mostly works, but there’s one moment which is supposed to be horrifying but I heard laughter in the screening I went to.

One thing that is pretty even throughout is the tone. It’s consistently uneven. There are some sub-plots here which definitely could have been cut. Chief among them is a romance sub-plot that felt so unnaturally shoe-horned in I wanted to hit both characters with a cheese grater and tell them to stop being so damn horny. It might work if the performances are better, but they’re incredibly flat a lot of the time. So wooden they might as well be an IKEA shelving unit.

Now onto the good. The music is great. Both in terms of the songs picked, and the original score. It’s incredibly brutal in parts, not shying away in situations when lesser films would.

And the third act? It’s the cinematic equivalent of throwing lasagne against the wall and playing in the mess it’s created. It’s chaotic, it’s strange, and it’s a hell of a lot of fun.

The visuals are brilliant in parts. Some of the effects aren’t great, but the actual look and colour schemes are beautiful. It says a lot about both this film, and how much of a pretentious dick that I am, that there are a few scenes in this where I thought “wow, that use of focus and shadow is very Citizen Kane”. There are so many shots here which could have been a poster.

So in summary go see it. You may love it, you may hate it, but you will be fascinated by it and feel yourself unable to turn away. I am so glad something like this can get made, I am all about this kind of big-ish budget experimental cinema. A truly risky move from director James Wan, but one I feels pays off.

The Green Knight (2021)

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Quick synopsis: Gawain, a young knight (Dev Patel) is determined to prove himself to his uncle King Arthur at a party when the event is crashed by The Green Knight with a deal: someone can strike the Knight with an axe, and in one years time will get the same given to him. Gawain cuts his head off and is horrified when the Knight gets back up and re-attaches his head, leaving after reminding Gawain of his promise.

That was not a quick synopsis I know. But this is not a quick film, it is long, and it is slow, and it is powerful. I had the trailer for this before quite a few films this year. It looked like it was going to be a weird one. A24 films have a habit of being a bit weird, and their horrors are usually deeply disturbing (although is this a horror? What is it? I’ve watched it and still not sure). It was then announced that the cinematic release for the UK had been cancelled. I’m used to films being cancelled but this was the most disappointing, I didn’t want to have to watch this on a computer screen as it wouldn’t really feel right. Thankfully it came to Amazon Prime. Now I do have some issues with Prime, it’s probably the major streaming service I use least, primarily because of how much it seems to have contempt for the people who use it

I have to say, and this surprises me quite a lot, I think this may have actually been better to watch at home than at a cinema. This is a strange film, the kind of one you need to set out a block of time to watch it, and then set aside some time afterwards to get back to normal. And at home it allows you to take the film in at your own pace, and you need that for something like this. It’s like a very rich meal, no matter how much you’re enjoying it, it’s difficult to tackle in one sitting.

I can’t really explain why this is. I’ve seen weirder films. I’ve seen more devastating films. But for some reason this one sat really heavy with me. It’s the film equivalent of wading through a thick swamp, and I already know I’m going to need a second viewing of it.

I will admit, this film does gain something if you’re familiar with the Arthurian legend on which it’s based. There are some character motivations that you won’t understand (and you might even think it’s actually a plot hole), and the ending may frustrate you if you don’t know how the original story ends. It’s a film that encourages research. Normally I hate that but this film is so fascinating that I don’t mind.

On the subject of the ending: there is a chance they have changed it from the original tale. It’s incredibly open to interpretation. But in a sense it doesn’t matter. What will happen isn’t important, what is important is that no matter what does happen, he has accepted it.

This is superbly directed by the way, the only previous film of David Lowery that I have seen was Pete’s Dragon, and I wasn’t too impressed by that, but he completely nails this. Every scene is full of incredible detail and love. He injects the film with a strange energy and tone which I am all for.

Dev Patel continues to impress with his performances. He’s quickly becoming one of my favourite performers to see on screen. His presence lights up the screen in this, providing a balance of cocksureness and doubt. Somebody who feels he has a lot to live up to, and is determined to prove his worth, but does so by making some terrible mistakes. The whole concept of the film is from him making a bad decision, if he just made a small cut on the Knights face, he’d have been fine. But because he was so desperate to prove himself, he decapitated them. He has proven himself, but over the next year he sees his life turned into a story, people are more concerned with telling his tale than learning from it. The story is more important to them than the person. You can just see how that breaks him, and it’s perfect.

So yeah, in summary I loved this film. but there is a chance you will completely hate it. It is very slow, it leaves a lot of things unsaid and it is improved by background reading. It is frustrating, with characters seeming important and then leaving. A truly divisive film, but one that will definitely inspire a strong reaction, even if it is one of hate. This is the closest film has got to the old storytelling medium of “telling a long story around a campfire”. A few years ago Warner Bros. were attempting to kickstart an Arthurian Cinematic Universe. If they were like this, I would have been in full support of it.