Studio - Netflix
Starring - Jessie Buckley, Jesse Plemons, Toni Colette, David Thewlis
Writer - Charlie Kaufman
Director - Charlie Kaufman
Release - 4 September 2020
It may be unfair but most of my judgement on this movie came from after being sold by its trailer. The trailer played like a psychological thriller or a straight up horror, and it really wasn't. This was a drama and to sell it any differently is doing the movie a serious disservice.
Another part of this low score I've given is because Charlie Kaufman, whose work I usually enjoys, adapted the book perhaps a little too closely. And the fact that the author wrote about suicide and how the events of the movie all played out within his own head, none of this was really clear.
I went into the movie only having seen the trailer and knew nothing about the book. Just on that surface, it was a poorly edited movie, the horror elements slash mystery in the beginning had no resolve.
I would have turned it off three-quarters in had it not been how superior Toni Colette was in the second act, a performance that was worthy of her turn in Hereditary (a performance that the Oscars sorely overlooked). And I forced myself to stay with the movie just to see what the "twist" was.
But the twist came in the form of a long dance number followed by an animated pig, which were all in the book (I was told). And I wished Kaufman used a different way to convey the author's thoughts because for someone who knew nothing, that final act really did not play well.
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