Ashgrove

When I sat down to watch the 2022 drama "Ashgrove", I had actually never heard about the movie. And from the movie's cover, I was somehow assuming that this movie was perhaps a thriller of sorts. But with it being a movie that I had never seen, of course I opted to give it a chance.

And a chance it got, and I made it about halfway through. Then I just simply tossed the towel into the ring out of sheer and utter boredom. This movie was insanely slow paced and monotonous. It was essentially just a movie about two people trying to deal with relationship problems. And it didn't help much to entertain me that the dialogue was very unappealing and lacking interest, and the characters just didn't strike me as being interesting either.

I am sure that the acting performances in "Ashgrove" were fair enough, just a shame that writers Amanda Brugel, Jonas Chernick and Jeremy LaLonde didn't churn out anything worthwhile for the screen.

And you know when the movie is starring the people that also wrote the script, then it doesn't usually bode all that well.

I have zero intention of returning to watch the rest of "Ashgrove", because it was just simply too much of a boring and pointless ordeal.

My rating of director Jeremy LaLonde's 2022 movie "Ashgrove" lands on a two out of ten stars.

Try as I did, I just couldn't get into this film. "Jennifer" (Amanda Brugel) is a top scientist trying (pretty much single handedly, it appears) to save the population from a water toxicity issue that could wipe us all out in five years. She leaves their rural farmhouse suddenly claiming she has the solution, then something happens? What? Well that's what the next seventy minutes try to explain to us, but I found the whole thing so contrived and far-fetched as to beggar belief. Basically, her bosses are concerned for her mental health given all the strain this researching has put her under, so tell her to take a weekend off with husband "Jason" (Jonas Chernick) so she can recuperate. Clearly their marital relationship has been under pressure too, and some of the plot focusses on that and on their visiting friends "Elliot" (Shawn Doyle) and his pregnant wife "Sammy" (Natalie Brown) who add some more domestic melodrama to this otherwise really lacklustre story. The dialogue is really poorly written, the interaction between these people would have to have you question what on Earth they could ever have seen in each other in the first place. Despite the merits of her scientific work, "Jennifer" came across as a complete pain in the neck and he, well he's just a drip! I believe it was the World Premier of this film that I saw at the Glasgow Film festival - not one of my better choices, sorry,

So, some reviewers found this boring.... I totally disagree. I wonder why somebody would find this movie boring... maybe because they like more physical action? Or have no patience for some character study and real time conversation?

I found this movie quite a geniously made mystery film. It kept me guessing. It kept me engaged, as they say.

The acting is superiour. The music! Very special. And evry fitting. Yes, slow, but a mysterious kind of slow.

It draws you into the atmosphere.

The beginning.... very well made. The whole setting with the poisenous water it is not very easy to make a different-from-our-reality setting feel natural in a movie (or book, for that matter). They excelled at it here! The water bottles, ounce-counting - came across as so natural as if it was the most normal thing in the world.

Very well done!!!

I heard about this film.in it's infancy, pre release and saved it to check out when it was available.

Fast forward and finally checked it out. Sort of actually. I couldn't finish it on the rainy Sunday afternoon when there was absolutley nothing on but infomercials. Yes, it's as boring as watching mushrooms grow. The director seems to have tapped into some local band to do the music which was weirdly thrown in at times while the characters, with 20 minutes left, annoyed the piss out of me and my cat enough to just back out and watch something else. So yeah, have no clue how it ended and really didn't care enough to continuing watching.

GameShow Network for the win

Don't waste your time.