pob75

How is this still going? Awful, inane, illogical, unsupported, wild and nonsensical "conclusions" and "interpretations" of repetitive, ridiculous and unspectacular pseudo-scientific, mumbo-jumbo "experiments." All while displaying fake earnest frowns or badly acted shock or wonder.

Nothing is ever followed to an ending. Nothing is ever found. No statement or hypothesis ever has any remotely solid foundation.

They just do the same things over and over. Let's fire a rocket...... Let's try a drill........ Let's measure radiation....etc. Etc. Let's assume the least likely conclusion, ignoring the obvious explanations and pretending to find something.

The only mystery here is how any supposed scientist descends to ham acting and spouting utter rubbish whilst abandoning any objectivity or logic. Or how anyone takes any of it seriously.

"Maybe it's a portal." Or maybe it's just guff.

Incredible in entirely the wrong way. And not even entertaining.

I am genuinely amazed at how unengaging and superficial this film felt. It surprises me that a film with this subject can be so uninvolving and unaffecting. Just about everything is well below standard - music, acting, dialogue, editing..... etc. There is not one area where it feels like there has been real skill applied.

It is very difficult to try and imagine what the director thought he was showing. We jump around in time and characters have not even been aged. We follow (a very unconvincing) Mengele more than the title character. Most scenes seem to have been filmed against a shed wall. All the sets feel small and there are no wider shots or context. The sets, the costumes and the actors just do not convince in any way.

I won't even bother addressing historical inaccuracies and the ridiculousness of some scenes because the film never gets the viewer to a point where those things matter - it never grabs you or gives any convincing sense of even one character to latch on to or care about.

There is no atmosphere. No sense of any realism. Women deliver nice clean babies without breaking a sweat. A short, lazy scene showing the pre-Auschwitz life of characters does not automatically give them life or create empathy. A few wipes with a muddy cloth on your actors' legs will not suffice to convey that they are people suffering in Auschwitz.

I have learnt one thing. I know now it is possible to make a film about Auschwitz and leave the viewer almost completely emotionally untouched. I wouldn't have believed it before this.

Finally I caved in, figuring there must be something here for everyone to keep banging on about it. Coming late to this means I've been able to watch it as a relative binge. Last series is now airing and I'm halfway through series 4. Usually this makes something easier to get in to and more enjoyable for me.

Despite that this is hard work for low reward.

There are too many barriers to stop me getting in to it. The most invasive initially - the accents. They don't even seem to improve over several series over several years. Special mention to Aunt Polly who seems to be from Liverpudlingham and speaks several variations of scouse mixed with caricature brummie (and some newly invented, highly unique accents) often all in just one sentence. Her accent jolted me out of this so many times. She is not the only offender. Truly awful accents at times - I'm surprised some of the scenes were not refilmed (or even re-recorded vocally and dubbed over) until the accents were at least less bad.

The casting of a few characters feels wrong to me but I accept that is highly subjective. There are some performances that are good but can only work with what is written. Too many important characters are not well written and/or cast and/or acted.

As jarring as some of the accents is the retro-MTV-ness of the whole thing. Slow-motion Reservoir-Dogs-type walks and anachronous, unfathomable music choices feel completely wrong. It just does not work for me. It really feels MTV-ish or similar in tone to "Lock Stock..." (which I also really struggled with).

I could have possibly acclimatised to all the above but for the last barrier. Probably the biggest and most important issue for me is the writing. It feels lazy, rushed and poorly done, like it was written the night before it was filmed. It does not feel like there is any ongoing, over-arching or consistent character development.

Some characters are thin, bare-bones stereotypes.

There are many times I don't believe the characters would do what they are made to do. Too many flip-flops in how they act or inconsistencies in major aspects of their personalities get wedged in and then near-instantly they randomly revert to previous versions of themselves.

Characters are vaguely re-introduced, remembered or mentioned from nowhere and then (Hey presto) they pop back in to things a scene or two later. Situations which could have been used to increase tension are quickly and casually resolved and tossed aside.

You can almost see the writers violently yanking the strings on their half-finished puppets. Many events are like a boxer choreographing his punch and are highly predictable.

Things that could (and should) have been major character threads get brought up, played with a bit and then dropped within an episode or two. PTSD ("shell-shock" back then) becomes Brief-TSD. It then never recurs despite gun battles, massive explosions, violent bereavements etc. Which would undoubtedly be triggers at least some of the time. Major drug problems just crop up then disappear with no effort or difficulty.

It all ends up feeling like the writer(s) realised they needed something for a scene so flipped back a page and put in a lazy set-up reference to it a few paragraphs before. Or felt they needed a bit more meat in an episode so introduced a major issue for a character but then couldn't be bothered to keep it going or resolve it properly. It happens over and over again.

To me it does not feel rich in character, depth or detail as others seem to judge it to be.

I want to give this a 5.2 but rounded up to a 6 purely as it has a bit more merit than some of the things I have given a 5/10.