The Crescent

Very, very slow. It doesn't fit together well to make a whole story.

First off this movie is very slow moving but I stuck with it because I read reviews.

If you are wondering if you should watch this movie do not make your decision based on my review. I just didn't understand it.

Have to say the acting from the little boy just amazes me. He did things that no normal two year can do.

I.

Beth has lost her husband and takes their toddler Lowen to their beach house to heal. While there, she is frightened by an elderly neighbor who has taken an interest in her son. The movie is trippy and beautiful and slow but it does what The Babadook didn't - make you care for Beth and her son Lowen. As slow as it was, I was so terrified and uncomfortable for Lowen I almost had to stop watching. The toddler was amazingly cute and so good I wondered if he was older but small for his age. There were hints at the movie ending but for the most part it managed to maintain the mystery until the very end at which point everything makes sense.

It's a slow burn for sure, it takes a while for things to start getting weird, and creepy, but once they do it gets good fast. It took a little while for me to see the twist coming, which I really liked. It doesn't come out of no where either, there's small hints. I really liked the story, and thought the slow pace at the beginning paid off in the end.

Because damn, it got REALLY creepy.

The son in the story is very young, which adds to the creepy when things set it. And I liked how they managed to keep him chatty through the story, that must have been difficult with such a young child. I really thought it was a good film if you can get past how slow it is at the beginning.

This movie is a shining example of someone who had a very specific vision for their film, so they just did whatever they wanted and it didn't end up coming together in any meaningful way. In an attempt to be deep and symbolic the movie is instead pretentious and a waste of time. The story is nonsensical and confusing until a character just explains it at the end. It's manages to be obtuse and hard to follow without actually being intriguing or leaving much up to interpretation. It's shot like absolute garbage, mostly using a lot of ugly close ups and handheld shots that have no sense of framing for the scene. Occasionally the movie has weird interludes where the aspect ratio changes to basically portrait view for seemingly no reason. There are some interesting visuals involving paintings made by the main character, but they don't end up having any real significance other than looking cool. Every performance is laughably bad; the lead especially seems incredibly bored every time that the scene is supposed to be suspenseful or scary. Probably most damning, it just isn't scary in any way. Nothing that happens to the main character and her son is really that threatening or disturbing in any way. There are a litany of cliches and played out set ups that never go anywhere. For a movie that's paced like a slug on wet concrete it doesn't create any sense of suspense whatsoever. In total, it's stupid, it's boring, it's ugly, it's poorly acted, and it has nothing to offer on a story level. Skip it.