merrickis

Honestly, it's a well-made movie. Acting is great, cinematography is great, even the directing is great. The issue is this a 1h 40m movie with about 40 minutes of ideas if that. If this was a short film, it would work perfectly... but it's not. It's a full-length film. And that means it has to stretch this otherwise good idea until it far overstays its welcome.

More recently, Peacock released an abysmal movie, 'Survive the Game'. Honestly, if I had seen Game first, I'd have no will to see this one, so if you're in that boat, let me tell you that Game doesn't reflect on this.

Peacock is a very skilled short-film writer, but that doesn't necessarily translate to the ability to write full-length movies.

In short: this is a fantastic short film, don't let Peacock's ineptitude on his later project turn you off of watching it.

Peacock had, prior to this movie, only written short films, and that shows. Essentially, everything in the movie could, and very much SHOULD have happened in a far shorter timeframe, and the fact that it runs around 90 minutes means everything drags on and on.

This is the root of many other problems too. Peacock is obviously reaching for ideas to fill the 90-minute timeslot, and because he doesn't know how to do it, quickly starts turning to tried-and-true clichés that have done it a million other times before. This leads to terrible acting - not because the actors themselves are bad (most aren't, to my knowledge) but because there's only so much even the most skilled actor could possibly do when being given absolutely terrible dialogue with even worse pacing and direction.

For what it's worth, I'd seen some of Peacock's work before, and this didn't make me think any less of him as a writer. He's decent at writing short films, and if he returns to that I'll be interested to see what he writes next. This just makes it very, very clear that, in terms of full-length productions, he's far out of his league.

Unrelated, but this movie also made me lose The Game.