Bottom of the World

Strange, lost, different, stopped, paranoid, but I liked it, slightly, I could have more movement, maybe an explanation, the analogy of peas, which turn into a glass of water, the little boy tortured in childhood, his bloody mouth reminiscent of Joker... A parallel reality, dream, verse, obverse or multiverse, confused, and confusion permeates us at the end of the film, little explained, everything subjective ... Interesting...

I kind of liked 'Bottom of the World'. I make no bones about the fact I'm a fan of the 'mystery' genre, and this film certainly had an element of mystery to it. It's a film where the audience knows as little about what's going on as the characters (if not even less at times), yet there are constant hints as to the direction our thinking should be going in. Then a nice little ending was the icing on the cake.

The whole "nothing makes sense, what is going on?" thing has been done in movies thousands of times over the years, but it always seems to work. I think in a way, much like a magic show, the audience wants to be fooled, or at least in a state of curiosity. It can also be quite easy for film makers to pull off, because the usual linear film making techniques obviously go out the window, and thus it can be harder for an audience to judge what is actually good and what is not.

Some people on the other hand will always hate this type of film and that's fine. I see 'Bottom of the World' being a very polarising film. Some will have a great time with it, while others will utterly despise it. I was in the former camp.

Easily one of the strangest and most confusing films I've ever seen, Bottom of the World. is also a captivating and intriguing film. Most people will probably hate it, but for some reason I was fascinated by it...some scenes are very suspenseful and creepy, others are wonderfully strange and surreal. Also seems to be a religious angle to the film as it deals with sin guilt, redemption and purgatory. Far out.

By chance, I watched this the same day I saw Jim Jarmusch's Paterson. Both are similar, but both fail for completely different reasons.

Bottom of the World does not know what it wants to be. It tells a non- linear story that gives itself away about 40 minutes into the film. After that, it follows a predictable path of key symbols to clue the viewer in to what is actually happening. It should have gone a completely different route and stuck with the bizarre, weird, sleazy feel it had at the beginning. It turns into a very underwhelming second half as it drifts away and fades into the same trap many other similar movies fall into. It tries too hard to pull a complicated story together in a very silly way.

The pace and acting are appropriate and the director does a good job with atmosphere and mood, but it falls flat overall.

I was a little bit skeptical going in, but thought it might be worth a watch just to see Jena Malone do her thing here.

More than a bit surprised, this was a clever puzzle wrapped in an enigma that requires more than a bit of attention paid to subtle details sprinkled into what seems to be a jagged form of editing, but is remarkably well resolved in the end. Jena definitely delivers what may be her best character study yet, but that's not to take away from Douglas Smith, who did an equally plausible job portraying a young guy caught up in a seemingly impossible situation.

I simply can't reveal what that "seemingly impossible situation" actually is, in that would be an obvious spoiler, but to discover just how far out that resolution is, you're just going to have to watch for yourself. Trust me on this one, it's worth the wait to find out.

Along the way in this uniquely twisted adventure are all sorts of quirky characters, which at first glance might seem to be absurdly overdone cliché' character concept representations, until the actual context becomes more apparent. Then it all begins to make sense . . . sort of . . . until the very end.

For some, this might take a bit of patience. There are moments which seem bizarrely out of context, or just don't seem to fit into what appears to be the story of the moment. But that's the key here. Time can be a fluid medium, depending on where one might happen to be in a yet to be fully defined version of reality.

Having said that, there were some clumsy moments where the editing definitely could have fit together better, or scenes that appear to be more than a bit rough around the edges, but the given the uniquely original story and how it's told, a certain amount of forgiveness can be granted for such imperfections.

Maybe not the best, but certainly not the worst of such attempts at this sort of genre'.

A solid seven stars for me . . .