Don't Tell a Soul

Almost everyone's heard of characters you love to hate.

Problem is, not all of us love it.

The character of Matt, the older brother, made it REALLY difficult for me to enjoy most of this movie. He's such an unmitigated pile of rancid human garbage.... Every time I saw his face or heard his voice, I just thought, "Would you please just eff off and die already?" (That said, it would be a terrible sin against Fionn Whitehead to omit mention of what an excellent job he does playing this character. He's 97% as believable as he is despicable. I think the other 3% can be explained if we assume Fionn is just a generally nice guy who deep down doesn't understand people like Matt. Unfortunately they do exist. Anyway, here's hoping Fionn does more work like his brilliant performance in the Black Mirror special Bandersnatch.)

Thankfully the younger brother Joey is really the main character, so we spend more time with him than with the trashstorm that is his brother. Joey really is a good kid without any adequate role models, struggling to figure out how one goes about being a good person in a world that's mean as hell. If there's any compelling reason to watch this movie, it's the character of Joey.

The plot is relatively thin (which should be obvious; it's a movie about a boy talking to a guy down a hole) but what is there mostly works. It's only toward the end that it starts to push the limits of credibility.

Bottom line, a fair character study of a good boy in a bad world, and an effective psychodrama. Just don't expect satisfaction, and don't be surprised if Matt brings your blood to a rolling boil.

This is a story of two brothers, the older one of whom is a homicidal maniac, who rob 10,000 that just happens to be sitting in a very vulnerable spot for some unknown reason. They are out in the woods, and the money is in a tent that is being fumigated it seems.

When they leave, they're in the middle of the woods, and for some reason a security guard appears and chases them.

This basically comes down to a "one character" in Hell story. The younger brother is surrounded by maniacs wherever he goes. The story is through his eyes, and that's fair, because he does have to make difficult decisions.

Any more would be a spoiler. Suffice to say, this is unfortunately set in what is supposed to be a real world, but it's more a Twilight Zone arena. However, if we're seeing it through the eyes of the one interesting character, then that suffices if one doesn't expect too much.

The biggest problem is that the writer sets this in Louisville, and he's obviously oblivious to Louisville. There is NOWHERE in Louisville that is this isolated. Louisville is too densely populated throughout to have an open woods arena that no one ventures into. It just cannot happen. The parks in Louisville are hardly what can be called "parks". They're crowded beyond redemption. Even the less traveled ones don't have the solitude needed for this story line. You have to go at least 20 miles outside the county to have a longshot chance for that.

Still, there are maniacs like the older brother, sadists who look for excuses to hurt others, abounding in Louisville, so that much is true.

It has a lot of plot twists, but i'm kinda disappointed with the ending :(

'Don't Tell a Soul' is something similar to what I would produce if I ever wrote a screenplay I suspect. I would just think "what is the most interesting thing that could happen next?" and then write it, with no regard for whether that is consistent with the story or the characters. There are some truly baffling character decisions in this film. The tempo switches and the changing of motives is almost impossible to keep up with. It's a shame because it truly hampers a film that, if handled the write way, had some real potential.

The film digs itself a bit of a hole (so to speak) early on and I don't think they knew how to dig their way out of it realistically. There's an interesting premise set up, but the logical next step to push the story along isn't a logical step. From there the story and character arcs all just go out of the window and the film falls apart. Where Mena Suvari's character for example ends up is about as ridiculous of a thing as I've seen in a film.

I wanted to like 'Don't Tell a Soul' but it just never clicked for me. Even at a very short 83 minutes it still feels like it drags on a little. Rainn Wilson is always fun to watch in anything he does, and there's the odd curve-ball in the mix that is a bit of fun, but overall this film didn't work for me at all.

This is a fantastic, well paced movie. For just under 90 minutes not a single scene is wasted. Give it a watch!