Personal Shopper

I normally like when arthouse touches on horror but this piece of crap didn't do anything for me. Neither as a drama nor a genrefilm.

And the 30 minute scene of Kirsten Stewart texting is by far the most laughable non-cinematic experience I've ever had. The director needs o go back to film school.

I don't know much about ghost stories, but I have been gravitating to them of late. This one is the most realistic one I have run into so far. A woman's twin-brother has passed away and she is preoccupied with an oath they had made, whoever dies first will try to pierce the divide and leave a sign for the other. There is a rather sadistic soundtrack consisting of a free-floating sonar-like program but instead of underwater, we get a generalized array of ambient tracks from whatever locale our POV character happens to be at the time and at an extremely high decibel level. If the idea is to keep the viewer a little on edge, it succeeds. There is an extraordinarily realistic visitation scene which frightens. There is a sequence where an unknown texter is harassing the survivor, which under the circumstances, is more than a little eerie.

The denouement is predictably unclear except perhaps for especially perceptive viewers of which I do not belong. But an explanation is there that seems quite convincing (I had to read it from a review) which I give the movie credit for. It's not just a scary story that leads nowhere.

The picture's main problem is that it simply doesn't know what it wants to be, leading to a number of plot strands and genre cues that feel as though they aim to carry the rest of the narrative but then just fizzle away, almost as quickly as they arrived, with little to no consequences. The end result is a highly unfocused piece that bounces around between story points without ever really connecting the dots, fluttering from a character-based ghost story to a pseudo psycho-sexual thriller and back again, to the point where even a major murder mystery seems inconsequential. There are also a few plot pretensions in 'Personal Shopper (2016)' that are simply pretentious, serving only to add confusion rather than mystery, and the flick finishes ten minutes too late to be anything other than annoying (seriously, the perfect enigmatic ending happens and then the film just carries on). It also frustratingly treats its supernatural elements as ambiguous when we have been overtly shown them several times before, so - despite a few decently compelling sequences - the overall experience sadly falls pretty flat. 5/10

First it seems like a haunted house trope, but no, then a ghost hunt, nope, then some kind of mystery thriller, but neither... It´s ultimately a grief film that drags on and on, relying exclusively on Kristen Stewart to sustain everything. It´s so subtle is almost not even there. To people who might make it to the end here´s a fine minimalistic drama that holds back from many clichés, a serious story, too serious maybe. There are a couple of great moments but it isn´t really rewarding. It just disguises a realistic drama as a ghost story, which is not the best idea cause it calls for an audience bound to be disappointed. I´m trying to like it but it´s just not good enough, it seems to add slightly relevant events just to fill the runtime. And it is confirmed, Kristen Stewart can´t smile. She tries at one point and it was like watching Wednesday Addams all over again.

Another movie where Kristen Stewart plays Kristen Stewart. I mean, come on; the gal can't act to save her life and yet everyone seems to be oblivious to the fact. The script is bad. Some lines are downright ridiculous, and the screenwriter seems to have been blind to the thin line between intriguing unanswered questions and plot holes. If you are willing to fill in the gaps with your imagination, though, and you don't mind the excruciatingly slow pace, you may enjoy the movie.