albatros22

The single star is awarded here for the dubious achievement in actually getting this project out of the mind onto the table and to the screen.

I cannot fathom how this film got distribution anywhere but the living rooms of the director's friends. The story is aimless, vacuous and dreary. The episodic 'arty' black-and-white sequences with 'arty' photography and overlaid narration are clichéd, cringe-inducing and pretentious. The characters are singularly unsympathetic, uninteresting and unattractive - intellectually as well as physically, I'm afraid - and the acting abilities are dismal. The sex sequences are empty, random, wholly depressing and lack any sensuality. Simply awful.

Truly one of the most irritating films I have ever seen. Apparently set in the 70s it also has all the depressing tinny qualities of a no-budget 70s B-movie, which may or may not be deliberate. If deliberate, I cannot fathom how this is interesting nor how it serves any purpose or person - certainly not the poor tortured viewer. This is like a hammer horror giallo pastiche, best tolerated in one's teens when high on substances, easily amused and prone to perceiving significance in random shocks and absurdities. In what way is this a masterpiece, please?

Toby Jones does his best to be baffled, stressed, interesting and increasingly haggard, but the supporting cast chew the furniture.

I am glad to have seen Strickland's impressive, if distressing first feature, 'Katalin Varga' before tonight, otherwise, after this experience, I might have been too discouraged.

Well-acted and intelligent, but viewing liable to cause abject depression. I am a mild-mannered person, however I found myself actually shouting at the screen for the old man in the story to shut up and go away. I was thankful, if irritated, that so much of the film was shot in impenetrable darkness. I am not sure that quality of darkness was intentional, but one watches a black screen for much of the seemingly endless 104 minutes. There must be other ways to convey such a story without alienating the viewer quite so fiercely. One felt bludgeoned by the argumentative and frustrated characters, who are largely unsympathetic, and should not be. This is a film, I believe, about backwardness and thwarted humanitarian intentions - a pertinent and timely issue. It's a pity to feel so indifferent and aggravated at the - slightly empty - end of such a film.