Rattlesnake

Unfortunately not very good as a movie. These Netflix originals are really hit or miss stuff and I think I can see a pattern already. In many cases they are something that would work better as an episode of an anthology series and don't really benefit from movie length. There simply isn't enough substance to carry a full movie.

We have a mother and a child who for whatever reason are moving by car and decide to take a short cut through a small desert road. Tyre goes flat and a rattlesnake bites the kid while the mother is changing the tyre. Mysteriously a trailer appears nearby where they go to seek help (cell phone naturally does not work). Kid is cured, but the cure comes with a price that puts the mother in a difficult situation. While kind of interesting setup, there is zero beef to the story, nothing is explained or based on anything. And this is often the case with these "direct-to-Netflix" movies, things just happen. When there is no story to base the plot on, it's not very interesting. Just so many why's .. And the ending is fittingly unsatisfying.

The direction - while not exactly bad - definitely does not add any artistic value to the movie. A movie either needs to be artistically interesting or tell a proper story, this one did neither. Why a rattlesnake? Who was the lady? What was the movie all about? Is there some folklore about a rattlesnake bite and cure that I as a European don't know? I mean the movie is even titled "Rattlesnake" and not "The Curse of The Desert Lady", which it probably would have been called had it been made in the 50s. It kind of has the same b-movie quality to it.

The acting is ranging from ok (Ejogo) to bad (Rossi).

This movie was all over the place, but entertaining? I guess.

I liked the idea, and it could've been good. I thought the main character took too long to act. For the situation she was in, I'd expect more urgency. Not enough suspense was created. I am disappointed. Very anticlimactic.

Rattlesnake has a great concept. A women gets a puncture and while fixing it her daughter gets bitten by a rattlesnake. Suddenly a trailer appeared and a women cures the bite and says she will talk about payment later. Payment it turns out is she must replace her life with the life of another or her daughter will die as payment has not been met.

So the concept is great, any artform which makes you think what would I do and helps you empathise with the characters is usually on to s winner but that's where it starts to be let down. It's right here where some amazing philosophical debates could start to begin. Could you find someone evil and feel ok about killing them when there is an opportunity that this person could change in the future and positively impact others? Is it right you should take the life of another when fatalists and people of religion may say you are going against god's plan. Or is it ok to take the life of someone seriously ill when there may be opportunity of miraculous recovery you are taking away. All these a brilliant film would make but it doesn't explore or question the situation at all, there is only acceptense. It's a shame really, opportunity lost.

Can't say I had exactly high hopes for this, but it's even more disappointing coming from the director whose previous movie (also a Netflix original) was the decent and effortful "1922". "Rattlesnake" knows exactly what it is, but it doesn't try to excel at it at all.

For the most part "Rattlesnake" feels like an uninspiring slow-burn, a familiar tale of a familiar dilemma explored only vaguely as if the filmmakers behind this were uninvested and half asleep. You know when you start cleaning up your room but give up halfway through? That's how "Rattlesnake" felt like. Some of the qualities include a good main performance by Carmen Ejogo (who tries her best while portraying a character in search of any real personality), a story that holds potential (but instead chooses the uninventive, watered down approach) arguably good cinematography (which kinda wears down with time by just not changing, impressing, surprising) & an original score that goes from seemingly effective to either repetitive or feeling like it's been wasted on this movie. Both the script and the direction is bland and comes off as simply not very smart. The pacing's very even throughout and also very slow, it doesn't quite pick up at the end either.

I believe "Rattlesnake" is a fine friday flick, but I can't put this anywhere above average, because in the end it feels more like just another filler for the mass market of movies on digital media than it feels like a sophisticated, well crafted and entertaining thriller/horror movie. My rating: 5/10.