Gozo

This is not a cheap movie, the cinematography and acting is good. The plot is awful and after you finish this movie you will feel uncomfortable for a long time. I was waiting for it to get better the last third and ending of the movie beyond ruins what could have been good. Trust me hard pass this.

Well there's something here, but I'm not really certain what it all does for me as a film. Theme of obsession is t play, but this film has a meandering pace that belies this theme. There is something that is murky in the plot that does pull to want to know what is happening, but at the end, the sum of the total from the film is lacking. Decent acting and good production are undermined by a weak plot that only loosely crosses the laces, never tying the knot.

"Joe, why are you doing this?"

-- Christine's enigmatic cries

In the year 1623, in his essay "Meditation 17," English poet John Donne compared humans to countries and continents to God as an argument that man can not exist without a connection to each other and with God. No person ever suffers alone and, as we cope with our own pains and of others, we discover an inner strength that draws us closer to God. And a piece of God exists in each and everyone of us.

And on the Republic of Malta island of Gozo in the Mediterranean Sea, Joe (Joseph Kennedy, a British stage and TV vet; Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll) and Lucille (Ophelia Lovibond, a 20-year vet of numerous British TV series; a co-starring role on CBS-TV's Elementary) come to learn that you never disconnect yourself from past sufferings. You can runaway from the past, but the further you run, the more desperate your isolation becomes, for the "island" you seek is just an illusion. There is no escape. For no man is an island. As Glenn Fry warned us in his lyrical interpretation of John Fowles's 1965 novel The Magus -- itself set on Mediterranean Greek island -- you can check out (from the mainland) anytime you like . . . But you can never leave.

For Londoners Joe and Lucille, their lazy-days dream is an old stone farm-house with a swimming pool and a breathtaking view. And while the real reason for their new island existence is Joe sweeping his past affair with Lucille, which lead to his ex-lover's suicide, he's convinced himself it's for his job as a sound engineer, creating a catalog of the island's unique environs for film soundtracks and commercial jingles. When a young tourist, a redhead resembling his dead ex-lover, Christine, goes missing, the island's idyllic, open landscapes transform into a claustrophobic nightmare: Joe's buried guilt and isolation manifests as a series of strange, recorded noises that descends him to a madness that Lucille must escape.

Now, while this sounds like a horror movie - filled with the (subtle) omnipresent hallucinations, spectres, and peripheral phantasms - this feature film writing and directing debut (based on an idea by Joseph Kennedy) by Miranda Bowen (BBC America's Killing Eve), is anything but. For Gozo is an island where the Hitchcockian meets the Shakespearian; where Joe's a doomed Prospero living a life of illusion - an illusion shattered by an Ariel that opens his eyes and ears to the tempest of his past.

And leave your A24 or Blumhouse jump-scare mainstream expectations of the paranormal variety on the mainland.

No coherent plot. A meandering go nowhere nothing happens type of movie. Yes the acting is fair and the cinematography and exiting quite impressive but to what end? It's an unfocused screenplay which translates into a disastrous movie. The lead man is absolutely despicable in a stupid annoying way. Lead woman is gorgeous big is trapped in this incredibly dumb script. Catch her in A Single Shot. They movie is brilliant! This movie is the opposite. Skip it. You will have missed nothing. 4 stars are for acting and editing and cinematography in an otherwise dreadful effort.

The rest they could have developed better. First off, as an American, I just want to say that the American guy gave me creeper vibes the whole time. He was 100% the type. The Mediterranean locals were portrayed as unattractive, lazy creeps/bullies, and the Brits were portrayed like Brits on holiday in the Mediterranean, if you know what that means. This movie plays out exactly how you would expect an indie trying to be subtle does, like a movie whose writer/director doesn't understand subtlety doesn't mean the absence of essential parts of the plot. Towards the last third, I started hitting that 30-second skip button with some regularity yet I still want my time back.