The Dead Thing

This was just not my type of movie. It was a very slow, artsy, horror adjacent film. It was never scary or particularly interesting.

It reminded me a little bit of Alex Garland's Men. It was a "message movie" and I suspect it was trying to say something about hookups, intimacy, and toxic relationships. But I really lost interest by the end, so the main message was lost on me.

I caught this one for free on streaming today, so I'm glad I didn't pay for it. I would recommend waiting until you can catch it for free on one of your services. It's on Shudder right now.

You might end up liking it if films like Saint Maud and Men are enjoyable to you. But this one wasn't quite as good as either of those.

My key points for this movie are:

Watch it like it is a psychological thriller rather than a psychological horror. I believe that will help you get you through most of it.

The concept does have great potential. It reels you in- you will find yourself lost in the movie at times. It goes a bit overboard artistically which makes the plot move slowly. Since they wanted to hide the big reveal, they use those artistic features to distract you.

It begins to feel longwinded towards the ending act. To me, the movie failed to reach a satisfying climax and left a lot of unanswered questions on the table.

This movie sucked. I heard good things, and was very disappointed. Its a romance movie. Basically 50 first dates without the laughs. I felt like I was dosed with acid and wanted to pull my hair out the entire watch. Had to turn it off about half way through. There is literally a scene when a ghost is slapping someone, that's about as scary as it gets. I was waiting for something to happen, but nothing did happen. Watching a bean burrito melt in the microwave for 90 minutes would have been a better watch. Alas, I didn't have a bean burrito to obliterate, only my mind was obliterated by this poor watch, like I did to my toilet later that evening.

It started off kind of decent with the girl using a dating app and being sexually harassed by a jerk on the job. The writers even had her put him off several times which was a needed switch in how women are generally portrayed as mindless twits. But they did screw up with the African American date taking home the dead guy who she didn't know from a can of paint.

And it was good that the sex scenes didn't come off like two people suffering from epilepsy or some type of strange aerobic exercise. And that is where the good ended.

Because I have grown tired off the old stale tired SOP of trying to add suspense with turtle walking, the classic "Deer in the Headlights" when asked a question. The sheer stupidity of the protagonist to spend nine days sleeping with a ghost. Followed by going against her own principles of not dating clowns that she works with, and the second co-worker was just as obnoxious as the one whop got fired. So the credibility of this liaison was nonexistence.

And like other viewers, by the end I didn't care and frankly I was rooting for the ghost to take her with him. No I did not enjoy this, and it could have been better without the faked forced fraudulent love interest at the end and why wasn't she concerned with her friend and room-mate???

No pun intended - the main character is barely living ... there is not much happening for her except for job, sleep and ... well hooking up. Not shaming her and you shouldn't either - you could say that she lacks emotion, she lacks connection ... so there is a hole that she needs to fill (get your mind out of the gutter, talking soul of course) ... finding someone who is able to do just that is not going to be easy.

Of course the one she does seem to find ... well there is a reason she connects to him. If you are not aware of the story or have read any synopsis, I will not tell you more. I can tell you that she gets clingy, which seems to go against what we learned about her ... but stick with it and it will make sense.

There are other flaws (story and character wise, with some twists either being predictable or not really playing out the best way they could) ... but overall this is more than decent ... fair warning this gets quite sexual - including nudity! Just know this (whatever you make of it is yours)