Reviews

Jason Statham always entertains with his fight scenes, and taciturn one liners. However, he's had a worrying run of bad movies lately.

The movie starts with an interesting and topical premise - that of the scammer call centre taking the life savings of the most vulnerable in society - the elderly.

But bad signs showed up in the beginning with the unprofessional FBI agent Verona Parker, who with an initial splash of casual racism toward the "White dude" beekeeper (Statham) corrects her assumptions of guilt with a peace offering of liquor.

From there the movie becomes increasingly silly, with cartoonish villains, unrealistic plotlines and a predictably telegraphed twist toward the end.

I've no idea why this movie has a 6.5 rating currently. Avoid unless you like action for action's sake.

This movie starts on a slow burn, but doesn't really reward the viewer.

A freelancing New York waitress happens to find a 23andMe-type DNA test kit following a gig, and decides to find out more about her past. It turns out somehow that she is related to a family with old money in Yorkshire, England, and presumably through connections in the website one of that family makes contact, eventually inviting her to a large manor in rural England for a family wedding. Boorishness ensues.

Without spoilers, this movie is predictable in its used of horror tropes, with some hamfisted attempts at social justice thrown in. The main character is apparently surprised that people in rural England are White (being a cosmopolitan New Yorker with an attitude).

I fell asleep during the third act when the story includes most of the actual horror action.

I'm a big fan of remote, icy movie settings, especially in horror; so it's possible that I'm being generous with my 7/10 rating.

This movie could have easily been spoiled with climate change preachiness, but the contemporary messaging was balanced with suspenseful dread and growing hints of the supernatural. The lead character (Perlman's Ed Pollock) is overbearing and unlikeable, but not comically so, and there was enough depth in other characters to assist the story.

If there is one criticism, the ending could be thought of as leaving too little to the imagination. Overall a nice way to spend a snowy night at home.

The acting and cinematography were fine for what the film is, especially on a budget. It has a depressing atmospheric nihilism that seems so common in arthouse films.

The trope of the disrespectful child where the parent apologizes after delivering a (deserved) sharp rebuke is a subversive element that appeared in western media since the early 90s. The movie uses this to play on separated single-parent insecurities ("am I a good parent? Will my child be taken from me?") as the relationship with the child unravels along with the mother's sanity.

The comparisons of this movie to Babadook are apt, even without the supernatural element of the former.

Apart from the lead actress, who was at risk of being a Mary Sue until the very end, none of the main characters are likeable. The husband had a bad experience at the start, which was hard to watch but certainly plausible, but he becomes an inept coward by the end.

The small town villains are barely more than thuggish rural white stereotypes, if they had a southern US accent and were missing a tooth or two they would have fitted that trope quite well.

The movie itself started well but became an unwatchable gory B-grade by the end.

Ultimately it's hard to tell whether this was a black humour movie or not. Would not recommend.

The premise of Greenland was intriguing, and it started reasonably well although the sick child and separated parents trope is well overused. It would be nice to see a normal family for a change to be honest. The movie had good tension and pacing to begin with until you realise half way through the movie that you've been watching the family run hither and thither with little plot development. As others have noted, the script writers and /or casting directors could not help themselves with their now-all-too-common woke racism, where all the bad guys are white while nearly all the helpful and compassionate strangers are POC. So tiresome.

In the end we are even deprived of even the satisfying climax of similar movies, but we do get to look at the family's emotional faces one more time after looking at them the entire movie. Yay!