Since this is opening in limited release in the US today, I figure it deserves a thread.
A trailer that has the premise an not much more:
It’s a bit shaggy, but I liked it a lot. And even if you don’t like it (and given that it’s a magical realist kaiju movie, I expect there’s people it will annoy), you probably haven’t seen much like it.
Also: @tomchick haha I saw this half a year ago.
I watched this last weekend. I liked it! Spoilers below.
It’s a surprising movie – I thought I had pegged it correctly as a comedy that would ultimately reveal the monster as a metaphor for Anne Hathaway’s alcoholism. But once the second monster shows up, it becomes something very different. The slow reveal of Jason Sudekis as a Bad Dude is uncomfortable to watch, but I like that it subverted my expectation that he would be playing a normal Jason Sudekis role.
I think it falls apart a little at the end. I’m not sure what purpose Dan Stevens served plot-wise when he shows up. And maybe it’s just me, but “self-loathing” seems like a really lame reason to do all the shit Jason Sudekis does, and it makes no sense as a conclusion based on what Anne Hathaway sees in her flashback. There’s no need to justify it – just let him be evil.
It’s also not very funny, although I don’t know how you market it as anything other than a comedy. “Black comedy” gets more butts in seats than Soren’s “Magical realist kaiju movie.” It’s actually pretty dark – there are a lot of peripheral deaths throughout the movie, and the climax involves a premeditated murder.
But overall, I liked it. It’s true that I haven’t seen anything like it before, so I enjoyed it for that alone, even if I thought it could be a lot tighter.
I enjoyed the movie and the premise was certainly interesting. I didn’t know anything about the movie so it was very interesting to try and figure out what kind of movie this was. Hathaway’s face in the last shot was very funny. I thought that the villain turn was a little out of the blue for the most part, but despite that I still liked the movie.
This looks hilarious
It’s been on my rental list since one of the Flop House crew (Dan, I think) recommended it. Still hasn’t arrived yet.,
I saw it a few months ago. I liked it, but I imagine I could have gone in totally blind to the plot.
Just saw this. Not exactly my “best movie of 2017” material, but at least it subverted my expection of it being a comedy (spoiler: it isn’t). The slow reveal of a psychopath sounds about right (psychos generally are smart enough to not advertise to the world that they are psychos).
It’s definitely in my top 5 of 2017.
Just curious, why do you think it is great?
A gutwrenching story of an abusive relationship, great performance from Hathaway, a deftly handled turn, and a novel conceit that works surprisingly well. It’s not perfect, but I really liked it.
I see what you mean. I just thought it was a bit derivative after Birdman: another small, magical realism genre blender.
