Lately I've had no streaming services active so I've been forced to trawl the depths of Amazon Prime Video for things to watch. Anyone who has done this before knows that 99% of Amazon's library is cringe-inducingly bad low-budget films. Octopus Pot, though, might be the worst I've ever seen. I registered for IMDB just to write this review because _wow_, it's like a sleazy predator took their diary and turned it into a film.
Very minor spoilers here, this is just about the setup to the film;
The protagonist, Ellis, is a hitman for "the agency", an agency of... hitmen, I guess. The movie opens with him quitting the agency. The reason he quit is because during his last mission, he saw a girl (named Julia) there and immediately fell in love with her, so he took her home with him. Throughout the film it's implied that she was a victim of human trafficking and most likely a sex worker.
Because Ellis quit The Agency, they keep threatening to kill him. Julia is living at his safehouse. In the first scene between them, Julia doesn't speak. The only thing that happens in the scene is Ellis tells her that he's dangerous but that she's okay here.
The second scene between Ellis and Julia features him telling Julia that he needs to run an errand and ordering her not to touch her phone, open the door, or approach any windows. He treats her like a child who doesn't understand and makes her repeat that she won't do any of those things. After that, he tells her to go take a shower and dress up in his ex wife's clothes while he's gone. Uhh, what? Okay...
The third scene between Ellis and Julia involves Ellis telling Julia that it's not safe for her to stay at his home anymore. She essentially says "Ugh that sucks, but okay, I'll leave, bye!".
Ellis responds to this by ordering her not to leave. She asks him what he wants from her and he says "I don't want you to leave." They then kiss and the scene is over.
The next scene between Julia and Ellis is post-coitus with her lovingly clinging on to him in bed. Ellis asks "Why me?" and when Julia asks for clarification, Ellis acts shocked that she "chose" him and says he doesn't know what he did to deserve a girl like her. Like, bro - you literally kidnapped her and imprisoned her at your safehouse. Immediately afterward, Julia confesses that she's in love with him. This makes Ellis angry. Ellis tells her that she's dumb and needs to stop talking. She tries to defend her feelings and he raises his voice and starts yelling at her for "messing things up", screaming that she's "not happy with the way things are". Julia decides to leave, but Ellis refuses to let her, saying he "needs" her.
Julia says she'll stay if Ellis says he loves her. Ellis gets angry at her and seethes for a while before reluctantly saying "I love you" - then screams at Julia about how he hopes that was what she wanted and he hopes it makes her happy. This immediately makes Julia happy and she reiterates that she's in love with him.
The next scene featuring the two characters involves them getting engaged.
Throughout all of this, it's worth noting that Ellis refuses to share anything with Julia or his friends. He orders everyone around and they obey without questioning, but he doesn't apologize for anything he does wrong, he doesn't let anyone in on the plan - the entire universe revolves around him saving everyone, if they'd just blindly obey him.
It feels especially weird knowing that the same person wrote, directed, and starred in this film - which clearly had no checks and balances from anyone involved. The whole thing comes off as a weird incel self-insert fantasy about how women should be swooning at this man's heels because he's bad and dangerous but repeatedly tells us that he has a heart of gold, and has zero other features, redeeming or not. Watching this movie made me feel incredibly uncomfortable knowing that this kind of insanity was enabled by every company who had a part in producing this and getting it on Amazon.
Beyond that Octopus Pot is technically bad - bad sound engineering, poorly delivered lines, you literally don't hear half of the dialog in the movie unless you have subtitles enabled. It wasn't "good"-bad or bad in a funny way. It was just weird incel fanfic.
