Bottom of the World

Strange, lost, different, stopped, paranoid, but I liked it, slightly, I could have more movement, maybe an explanation, the analogy of peas, which turn into a glass of water, the little boy tortured in childhood, his bloody mouth reminiscent of Joker... A parallel reality, dream, verse, obverse or multiverse, confused, and confusion permeates us at the end of the film, little explained, everything subjective ... Interesting...

By chance, I watched this the same day I saw Jim Jarmusch's Paterson. Both are similar, but both fail for completely different reasons.

Bottom of the World does not know what it wants to be. It tells a non- linear story that gives itself away about 40 minutes into the film. After that, it follows a predictable path of key symbols to clue the viewer in to what is actually happening. It should have gone a completely different route and stuck with the bizarre, weird, sleazy feel it had at the beginning. It turns into a very underwhelming second half as it drifts away and fades into the same trap many other similar movies fall into. It tries too hard to pull a complicated story together in a very silly way.

The pace and acting are appropriate and the director does a good job with atmosphere and mood, but it falls flat overall.

Bottom of the World is an strange, spellbinding film, because it is one of those rare films that doesn't contain a blatant plot; there's multiple unexpected plot twists and shifts where you are held strictly responsible for paying very close attention and attempt devise an idea of what's actually happening throughout the film. Jena Malone is great at portraying a woman's spiral into mental anguish brought on by guilt from an act of terrible violence. The underlying religious themes run strong. That's just my theory.

I was a little bit skeptical going in, but thought it might be worth a watch just to see Jena Malone do her thing here.

More than a bit surprised, this was a clever puzzle wrapped in an enigma that requires more than a bit of attention paid to subtle details sprinkled into what seems to be a jagged form of editing, but is remarkably well resolved in the end. Jena definitely delivers what may be her best character study yet, but that's not to take away from Douglas Smith, who did an equally plausible job portraying a young guy caught up in a seemingly impossible situation.

I simply can't reveal what that "seemingly impossible situation" actually is, in that would be an obvious spoiler, but to discover just how far out that resolution is, you're just going to have to watch for yourself. Trust me on this one, it's worth the wait to find out.

Along the way in this uniquely twisted adventure are all sorts of quirky characters, which at first glance might seem to be absurdly overdone cliché' character concept representations, until the actual context becomes more apparent. Then it all begins to make sense . . . sort of . . . until the very end.

For some, this might take a bit of patience. There are moments which seem bizarrely out of context, or just don't seem to fit into what appears to be the story of the moment. But that's the key here. Time can be a fluid medium, depending on where one might happen to be in a yet to be fully defined version of reality.

Having said that, there were some clumsy moments where the editing definitely could have fit together better, or scenes that appear to be more than a bit rough around the edges, but the given the uniquely original story and how it's told, a certain amount of forgiveness can be granted for such imperfections.

Maybe not the best, but certainly not the worst of such attempts at this sort of genre'.

A solid seven stars for me . . .

Anyway, this film was fairly fun if you like to think, figure things out. Like watching the 'best of' compilation of someone else's fever dreams. Bottom of the World delves under the surface, to the dark foundations that we embrace by night and ignore by day. This conceit is taken to a psychological level and into the disturbing unconscious mind of Scarlett (Jena Malone) and her creation of a new reality. The film leaves us with more questions than answers but hats off to trying to make something different and challenging to the viewer. I don't recall a film that was entirely a creation of the sub-conscious other than - Fight Club?