juanquaglia

The premise for this film is good: a mysterious man appears and gives our protagonist a box with a button on top. He explains that, if the button if pressed, she will get 1 million dollars, but someone she doesn't know will die.

That premise intrigued me, because it seemed a retelling of the classic Faustian legend: a deal with the devil in exchange for your soul. There is a lot of potential to explore there.

The problem is that this interesting premise gets solved early, and the film becomes one of the most incoherent and nonsensical pieces of cinematography I have ever watched.

After finishing it, I still have no idea what they were trying to do or even what kind of genre this is. Is this a horror film? Fantasy? A thriller? Sci-fi? A moralising tale? I doubt anyone involved had any idea either.

This film feels like someone telling you a long-very long-boring and nonsensical dream. Or a teenager improvising the plot while he plays with action figures. Things keep happening but nothing seems to make any sense.

The premise for this movie is interesting indeed: a military man is given the job of guarding a huge and mysterios gorge, to prevent whatever lies inside from coming out. That premise deserves a star.

Unfortunately, the premise is the only good this movie has. Almost every other aspect is disastrous: bad CGI, a script full of plot holes, some wooden acting, and a product that overall fails to entertain or make any sense. It is difficult to classify even in terms of genre, because it is all over the place.

Even though the film contains some elements of romance, the chemistry between both leads seemed lacking. They had different levels of energy and completely different, and even opposing, personalities. I would add that Anya Taylor-Joy seems miscast and unconvincing as a tough soldier. She does not have the physic nor the demeanor.

If at least the character development and casting of the leads had been correct, they could have supported the rest, and the film might have been watchable.

It seems strange this film is categorised as a horror film. Suspense or mystery would be more suitable genres to describe it, as there are very few scary scenes (possibly just 3) and they are not very scary. Most of the plot revolves around a chef trying to succeed in her profession. There is a lot of cooking, so the end result is more hunger than horror.

One main issue is that this movie is extremely slow. Every single action and dialogue takes much more time than it should. The reason behind that is that there was not enough material in the plot to create a whole film. This story should have taken 20 or 30 minutes to tell.

Even though it seems slow-paced, this films keeps you engaged enough to keep watching. And that is probably the main problem, I wish I had given up sooner, because the ending is one of the most disappointing ones you have ever watched. In fact, it feels like whoever wrote the story did not know how to end it.