fiend-93825

Just watched it in cinema and boy, oh boy, it was bad. I waited so long for this and the disappointment was off the charts.

This should be titled "The writing department will self destruct in 5 seconds" because abhorrence was painted across the entire film. I cannot believe this is the same guy who made Fallout and Dead Reckoning.

Endless flashbacks of previous movies, then they kept repeating the ones that had ALREADY been shown minutes before for no reason. This went on for nearly an hour! It's obviously not for intelligent viewers because it was always feeding them every single breadcrumb.

Action sequences were mid to say the least, nothing you haven't seen before. They just rehashed the ones you saw in previous entries (the villain steals something, then the team goes to retrieve it, then Ethan chases after the villain while the rest defuses a bomb/hacks a server. Sounds familiar? Because it's exactly what they did in Ghost Protocol and Fallout). The only scene that was worth watching was the submarine scenario, it really did put me on the edge of my seat just like the train sequence in Dead Reckoning, just like the final fight in Fallout or the tower climbing in Ghost Protocol.

The team, well, it was just Ethan anyway, because the rest didn't exactly do any heavy lifting per say. They were so forgettable, it was like McQuarrie didn't exactly write the script with them in mind. Can't go much into details without spoilers, but let's just say they weren't the badasses you saw in Dead Reckoning. As I mentioned Dead Reckoning, people had mixed feelings about a main character's death but I actually liked it. Might have not been a fitting ending for that character, but it made me feel something. Guess what? They did the same thing here, they sacrificed another main character, and yet the way the filmmakers framed, executed and edited this sacrifice was just tasteless, poor, unemotional.

Speaking of villain, he was godawfully stupid and had the most comical end. He was intimidating in Dead Reckoning but here, he was a whiny coward who ran away at every chance. The final fight was so boring I almost fell asleep. The real villain behind the scene was also dumbed down to the most pathetic "entity" and served zero purpose (probably an excuse to add a bunch of generic government characters who also served nothing). It employed various diversions against Ethan and his team multiple times in Dead Reckoning, guess it snoozed halfway like me this time around.

Nothing special to say about the technical aspects, but I'd like to point out that even the soundtracks didn't sound like they belonged in a $400 million budget movie. They also repeated this particular sound cue during the final fight every 5 seconds, it pissed me off to no end. So goddamn irritating and cringey that I had to physically looked away.

Seriously. They really should have put the submarine sequence in Dead Reckoning, worked up a little magic and made it a 4-hour movie. It would have been much better. A massive downgrade, and a final film that didn't even feel like a proper goodbye. 6/10 simply for the submarine scene and all the crazy stunts Cruise did that even amazed and scared the whole cast.

A sleeper hit of 2023. It has everything I want from a thriller: Stellar performances (Willa Fitzgerald freaking killed it), top-notch cinematography, great original scores and sound mixing, simple yet interesting plot, story structure that is similar to Christopher Nolan's Memento in nature and it subverts my expectations at every turn. Every time you think you know the answer, the movie just does a complete uno reverse; not that it's that creative, original or unconventional, I just believe Strange Darling is one of those thrillers told in the most memorable, fun and artistic ways, and I assure you it is not easy to please me as an enthusiastic cinephile. It reminds you a lot of Drive 2011.

Nothing else to say, go watch it already. One of the most immersive 1 hour and 30 minutes.

Only a couple episodes in and this is a far cry from the likes of Love, Death and Robots. Miller really did not cook with this unfortunately.

Visually, it is awesome with beautiful art direction and great animations. However, it does not apply with the characters and plot. Obviously you have to play these games to fully understand them but they did a terrible job with the writing. Stuff just happens. You see them done better before. I feel no creativity, no passion, only a hollow display of graphical display. For comparison, some chapters in Miller's previous work were actually thought-provoking, dramatic even with minimal voice acting. Here, there are no stakes, imagination nor intelligence.

6/10. It's a shame, I've been waiting for weeks.