Don't Tell a Soul

Almost everyone's heard of characters you love to hate.

Problem is, not all of us love it.

The character of Matt, the older brother, made it REALLY difficult for me to enjoy most of this movie. He's such an unmitigated pile of rancid human garbage.... Every time I saw his face or heard his voice, I just thought, "Would you please just eff off and die already?" (That said, it would be a terrible sin against Fionn Whitehead to omit mention of what an excellent job he does playing this character. He's 97% as believable as he is despicable. I think the other 3% can be explained if we assume Fionn is just a generally nice guy who deep down doesn't understand people like Matt. Unfortunately they do exist. Anyway, here's hoping Fionn does more work like his brilliant performance in the Black Mirror special Bandersnatch.)

Thankfully the younger brother Joey is really the main character, so we spend more time with him than with the trashstorm that is his brother. Joey really is a good kid without any adequate role models, struggling to figure out how one goes about being a good person in a world that's mean as hell. If there's any compelling reason to watch this movie, it's the character of Joey.

The plot is relatively thin (which should be obvious; it's a movie about a boy talking to a guy down a hole) but what is there mostly works. It's only toward the end that it starts to push the limits of credibility.

Bottom line, a fair character study of a good boy in a bad world, and an effective psychodrama. Just don't expect satisfaction, and don't be surprised if Matt brings your blood to a rolling boil.

Simple but effective story that has you hooked mainly as all the actors put in a first class performance. Rainn Wilson in particular is spectacular as usual.

This is a fantastic, well paced movie. For just under 90 minutes not a single scene is wasted. Give it a watch!

A few twists and turns in this movie. Some good one liners that made it funny. But overall, the movie was ok.

The story started out fine but quickly spirals south. The characters make very dumb decisions that no one would really do if they were under the same conditions. I just think the screen writers just didn't know what they were doing. It felt like they didn't have the character arcs and the story well laid before the cameras began rolling. They just wrote in twists for the sake of subverting expectations but without a well laid out plan.

I am also very disappointed with Mena Suvari acting performance. It was seriously bad. She was the weakest actor of the whole cast.

Anyway, to summarize this film. I would say the main idea of this film would be, "The apples don't fall far from the tree". In the end, all of the main characters were rotten. Even the younger boy, Joey.