jtindahouse

Wow. What an experience this was. Zach Cregger (who was behind the underappreciated masterpiece 'Miss March' (and also may have made 'Barbarians')) is fast becoming a directors whose films you can not afford to miss.

Some of the horror in this film is basically as good as it gets. Unbelievably creepy and jump-scares that aren't fake and are genuinely justified and startling.

But then if horror isn't your thing, there's plenty here to like as well. If you removed all the horror from the movie, you'd still have a really strong and interesting film with rich characters and fascinating sub-plots.

I do have a couple of gripes. The film and the horror elements were so strong that they absolutely did not need fake dream sequences thrown in. Remove these (even though they were responsible for some great and creepy scares) and your film is just as strong.

Also I would've liked to see the narration at the start and end removed. It didn't add anything for me and I would've liked the film to just begin and find other means of exposition.

Gripes aside, this is still an incredibly strong film and a pleasure to sit through in the cinema. 9/10.

Note: Henceforth whenever someone offers me a glass of water, I will respond with, "A bowl, please."

What an odd little movie this is. There's almost no narrative structure. We just go from medical event to medical event with random nude scenes inter-spliced to break things up. Rinse and repeat for two hours and we're done.

A little bit of a story begins to form in the latter parts and that is certainly the most interesting part of the film. More of that kind of thing right from the beginning would've been appreciated.

Everything is so incredibly bleak. If their purpose was to put people off ever becoming a medic then mission accomplished I suspect.

There's the odd interesting scene and a reasonably strong finish, but mostly it's a miss. 6/10.

When you asked kids what they wanted to be one day, back in the 90s, they would always answer: an astronaut. Personally I couldn't think of anything worse. What part of it appeals to people? It looks absolutely awful.

This film ended up being a lot better than I expected. It's one of those films that gets better and better the further along it goes. When it started out it felt like a film we have seen a number of times before, and Casey Affleck was giving an extremely flat (even more so than usual) performance. I was worried.

Somewhere along the line though it hit its straps and I found myself hooked. It all builds up to a brilliant ending that I really enjoyed. If you'd told me 20 minutes in that I would end up giving this an 8 (and having debates in my mind about whether it could be given a 9) I would've laughed. But there it is, 8/10.