shauncore808

There are a lot of things this movie does well. The acting is incredible from virtually every cast member. The cinematography is outstanding, complete with some stunning views of some gorgeous landscapes that are pretty obviously not the Galapagos. The dialogue is also usually good.

What fails miserably is every other aspect of the writing. The characters are all either over-the-top cliches or one-dimensional drones, none of which have any depth whatsoever. Most of them are written to be unlikable, and the writers are a little too successful in that regard. (The only slightly sympathetic character is the insufferable nihilist, who just wants to be left alone when a bunch of twats show up at his door) There's really no good reason for these people to go to an island just to get at each others throats, and the writers REALLY stretch to justify that progression. A lot of people doing irrationally bad things to each other for no particular reason, just to contrive tension. There is more than one point where the movie starts feeling (weirdly) like an episode of Survivor. You'll catch what I mean if you're reading this before watching.

I have a feeling the writers have never actually set foot in nature, but have taken everything they know from other movies. There's a lot about the island, animals, and plants that just doesn't make sense. From what I've read about the real-life events, I think the writers tried to include key points but didn't understand them enough to do so realistically. I'm pretty sure one of the characters was planting manure at one point. Not fertilizing with manure, digging a hole and putting a chunk of manure in it. Is that how people in Hollywood think farming is done? They don't seem to know how dogs (wild or otherwise) behave either, which is kind of baffling. There's a scene in which the dogs could have shot laser beams from their eyes, and it wouldn't have been much more absurd than what was actually on the screen.

This is supposed to be based on the true story but as with a lot of movies the key points are there, but the details are completely made up. And in this case, poorly. It's pretty bad when so little is known of the real story, and it still feels more realized than the dramatized version.

I'm pretty sure that's the first time I've typed that word in 20 years, but it's the most fitting way to describe the laziest movie I've ever watched. There wasn't a single second of research put into ANY aspect of this movie. And I'm not talking about technical inaccuracies or exaggerations. I mean that the writers had no idea whatsoever about ANYTHING in this film. There are countless things in the film that they couldn't even bother typing into Google. I honestly don't know if I've ever seen an actual movie with so much that's just outright wrong. I'm not even going to bother giving examples, because every single thing involving any kind of science or technology is grossly wrong. Science, move out of the way cause we're making stuff up!

How anyone could watch this and take it seriously is beyond me. The only reason I'm giving it two stars is a few cool scenes and the fact that I actually started getting excited to see what absurd thing they'd come up with next. But make no mistake, this is one of the worst films I've ever seen.

First, the acting by both leads is incredible. Julianne Moore plays the same weepy mother she's played 50 times before, but there's a good reason she keeps playing the same role. Sydney Sweeney is the real stand-out as the addict daughter. She's been great in other roles before, but this is quite a bit different and she excels. I honestly have no idea what to think about Domhnall Gleeson's role. The character feels so awkward for the entire movie, and it's hard to tell if it's poor acting or just a very strangely written character (as in, a character that doesn't act like any human being to ever exist).

What makes this movie very hard to watch is the mother. They're trying to write the whole enabling-behavior thing, but they take the whole concept WAY too far. It's always hard to watch someone that's too weak to leave an abusive relationship but in this case, every single choice the mother makes is wrong. Every. Single. One. She's utterly unwilling to do even simple things to help herself (or ACTUALLY help her daughter). You spend two hours watching this utterly pathetic person make bad decision after bad decision, and by the end you have no sympathy left and don't really care what happens to her. And considering that most of this movie is just a VERY heavy-handed, clumsy, plothole-ridden recycling of stuff from other movies, there's no real payoff for the frustration. It's just not worth the effort for a movie that ends with the thought "Sure, whatever..." Edit/Note (not a spoiler): I realized what the ending reminded me of: Gone Girl. I can't explain why this is, but it's such a similar feel that it feels almost copied.