Blank

A good engrossing film spoiled by incomplete end. Although it becomes repetitive, the viewer is hooked to it just to see how it ends.

And that is it - The end never happens. The story suddenly ends leaving viewers with no answers at all for dozens of questions that are relevant and obvious for any film - How can an AI operated center stop working, and no one attends to it for one month or even more? What had happened if Claire didn't finish the story - would supplies have all been consumed and she die starving? There is bound to be some human supervisor somewhere keeping tabs on how long the supplies are going to lost and he/ she should have been worried about occupied rooms and should have come enquiring. Whether the novel get published? How was it received by readers? Did she publish it under her mother's name to make amends?

Actually, I had thought that the entire Rita's "I cannot open the door till the story is finished" thing is actually the center's method to force Claire to write up the story, to bring anxiety to her, to bring depression to her, so that she is forced to overcome her writer's block. But that was not so. The film just ended.

Claire has writer's block, is facing a deadline from the publisher, and can't finish. She decides to go to a retreat to finish her book. It is totally run by AI. Henry is her concierge, and Rita (android) is her personal servant. Everything is stocked in the way of food and wine as she requested, and the stay is for 30 days. Henry is a hologram. Then a glitch happens, and she is trapped in the unit. There are flashbacks, and she had a terrible childhood. Her mother considered herself a writer, but couldn't get any place to accept her stories. And she was locked in the house. That is the parallel, and the only way she can get out of the unit is to complete her book, and the AI decides if the book is finished, so tricks are not working. Might make a good 30 minute episode but not a full length movie.

Sometimes I wish I could detect brilliance, masterpieces and complexities and whatever superlatives they use to describe their experience (assuming its not marketing only) that easy like many reviewers do these days. Blank is not bad, the production is okay, the acting good, but the idea and the story itself is nothing really new or special. We watched this kind of movie many times before, if we are interested in that kind of movies (whatever artificial intelligence makes its own decisions and so on). If you read your good share of sci-fi stories or you watch sci-fi movies on a regular basis, this won't deliver any great surprises but the creative equivalent of a solid made cheeseburger - nothing more but nothing less.

It's pretty rare that you actually find a movie that you just have no clue where the plot is going and is really unlike any of thousands of other movies you've seen before. There were so many ways the plot could have gone in this movie, but there was no way to predict the way it really would go. Any complaint about the ending is laughably simple-minded since after the path the story followed, the ending is truly a twist that, again, nobody watching this entire movie could predict.

You can't stop watching this movie if you believe what's happening, because it's a bit unbelievable. But, if you don't believe it, that means there's some incredible conspiracy going on. And yet, the longer you watch it, the more it goes on down that path you can't believe, the more it just seems like it really will never end, like maybe the truth is something else. So, you keep going back and forth from "it's a conspiracy" to "it's an apocalyptic coincidence" to "is this all in her head???"

The poor reviews and low rating of this movie are very predictable, the way most people sadly are, and the way this movie is in no way. The handful of people who made this movie really were incredibly brave.

Most people today just want something that is predictable and entertaining, quickly rejecting anything that is not formulaic, not a remake, not a sequel in an established franchise. This movie is none of those things.

It is unique, from beginning to end.

There is one idea in the movie and it is stretched out for up to an hour too long. WE get it she can't get the door open. Oh no!!! Now lets keep hammering this same idea till the audience is sick of the sight of this movie. And where is tech support or some sort of manager of these units we're staying in? Ludicrous nonsense is what it is. The author writes the story of herself as a girl trapped in a house with her mother who is blind. Oh no, she's trapped in a house again, how dramatic this must be for her. We simply must keep watching this play out in parallel. It just goes on and on and on and on...