Reviews

This is really quite an amazing film considering it's budget. Estimated $7,000 USD? Wow. I'm not sure if this is another Amazon Prime original, but if it is, I'm impressed. The Vast of Night (2019) and Cosmos are two of my favourite sci-fi movies in recent years. Perhaps the magic is in the lack of budget?

Cosmos isn't perfect however. It's certainly more grandiose than The Vast of Night - and this, in my opinion, bogs it down. At first it was the music. I thought, wow this is a pretty nice score for a movie like this. Then as it played out, it began to sound more and more generic. By the end of the movie I was pretty over it to say the least.

The music is simply a reflection of the melodrama that consistently made my smile in an eye-rolling "this is so cheesy" sort of way. Sure, throw some character history in there and even some relationship stuff. But once you have a shot of two of the leads standing sideways in a wide shot, with epic music swelling in the background... come on.

The three leads are all fantastic when they aren't delivering corny lines and platitudes. The science seemed to be very grounded (to me, a non-scientist), and the story itself, especially pacing wise, I thought was perfect.

If I could change the movie in any way, to fit my personal taste, I'd get rid of the sappy "we can do it" fluff, and simply focus in on the actual science and technology. Ground it a bit more. Take out that music. And absolutely, cut that ending! No need to have a literal countdown where the characters race somewhere and make those dumb movie decisions that are only there to increase the tension. And don't show the alien.

Joint Security Area is not a war movie, but a mystery movie at its core. It's not particularly heavy, as it's filled with humour rather than gut-wrenching depictions of real-life North Korea. It's also quite sweet, which I found to be its saving grace. In all honesty, I wasn't enjoying the movie until probably half way through, once we begin to see the true nature of our protagonists relationships.

The structure of this film is very unique in that it portrays multiple realities as described by different characters. Looking back, it reminds me of what I had hoped The Hole (2001) would be, instead of the blatantly obvious anti-mystery that it was. JSA manages to provide some basic information about the situation, and then depicts the situation in three different ways, all of which were plausible and, from what I remember, consistent with the details outlined by Major Jean. It's almost like a classic whodunit.

What I didn't like unfortunately, was pretty much every scene that wasn't focused on our four main characters. I found the performances by the Swedish and Swiss soldiers, as well as Major Jean, to be amateurish. Particularly during their English dialogues - which is guess is forgivable as I assume English is at least a second language to each of them.

There were also times when Major Jean was laying out her analyses of the murders that I simply couldn't follow. Mostly cases wherein her logic seemed nonsensical, and her proposed explanations came out of convenience rather than actual detective work.

All in all it's a pretty good movie, but I still have my issues with it. I have to say it's probably my least favourite film from Park.

First off, I should mention some things this movie did well. It's competently shot, written, and directed. The acting is fine I suppose but none of the characters are dynamic enough that I could say they're good. They each get one emotion and stretch it over the entire film, including Tyler (Charlie Plummer), who acts like he's just found out that his dad is the Clovehitch Killer even before he had any suspicion that his dad was the Clovehitch Killer. I felt like I was watching a mumblecore movie. Some seem to think the performance was good - in my opinion it was stale, boring, and didn't seem to jive to the context of each scene.

Next I'll talk about a couple themes. I get this movie is supposed to be a dark murder-mystery with some coming of age qualities. Coming of age stories however, generally transition from an innocent tone (childhood) to a more serious tone (adulthood) - the protagonist is meant to mirror this transition. Like I said, I didn't think Tyler changed throughout the movie at all, and frankly, neither did the tone. The entire movie was creepy and serious from before the plot even started. We weren't shown a happy innocent normal American family. We were shown a creepy, strictly religious, domineering family with what appeared to be a scared kid who has to walk on eggshells whenever he's around his parents.

I ask have to mention how boring this movie is, and no, it's not because there isn't enough violence or blood and guts. I'm not a child. This movie is boring because of something called pacing. Pacing in a movie is when things happen and those things have consequences. Tyler begins to suspect that his father Don (Dylan McDermott) is the Clovehitch Killer fairly early in the movie. From that point on, most of our time is spent with Tyler finding new evidence or talking to his new friend Kassi (Madison Beaty).

The reason this is all boring is because nothing happens as a result of any of this. Tyler seems to have very little trouble accepting that his dad is a serial killer - at least according to his near-emotionless reaction. He doesn't go to the police, his mother, he doesn't even confront his father. Instead, his father confronts him, and Tyler just helps his dad burn all the evidence? I get it. It's his dad. He doesn't want to destroy his family. But then why not have some sort of scene where Tyler breaks down and contemplates his situation? Why does he just mindlessly commit the crime of destroying evidence of a murder with his dad, who's supposedly covering up for Tyler's uncle? He barely even reacts to the fact that his uncle is a serial killer.

Predictability also effects pacing. Who cares about the concequences when we saw them coming? The movie sets you up to think that Tyler's going to defend/cover up for his dad. The surprise would be if he actually shot his dad during their final confrontation. But that doesn't happen. Instead, Don attacks Tyler, his own son, without the slightest sign of remorse. Thus continuing to not add anything to the emotional weight of the film. Of course, we knew that Don would likely attack Tyler - either after Tyler himself tries to attack Don with the unloaded gun, or after Tyler gives up the gun. Regardless, we saw Tyler grab the gun and walk off without loading it, so it was fairly safe to assume that either Tyler would attempt to shoot, and Don would react, or that Don would attempt to shoot, and our protagonist would be safe (which ended up happening).

This all leads to the finale of the film wherein Tyler and Kassi somehow manage to beat Don's head in with a lamp without leaving a trace of blood in Don's latest victims bedroom. They then somehow manage to get Don's unconscious body out of the house and into the woods without anybody seeing in broad daylight, just so Tyler can continue to cover up more crimes. Something about children covering up crimes like this and somehow getting away with it doesn't satisfy me narratively - particularly when the entire movie has been fairly serious and grounded up until this point.

There are better murder-mysteries out there to watch. This one is fine, but doesn't do anything particularly well. I'd recommend moving on to something else.

This is probably one of my favourite movies of the last few years. It's extremely engaging and shocking both narratively and visually. The acting, pacing, and visuals of the film were all fantastic. Each character was well defined and explored.

This movie isn't perfect but it's pretty close to it. There are two things that come to mind which I think might fix it in my opinion. The first is a minor problem. At some point in the second half in the film, the camera freezes on each of the characters and fades to the next scene. It's the only scene where this happens, and I don't know why. It's jarring and unnecessary as far as I'm concerned.

The second is in the structure. For the first half of the movie we're lead to believe that Sook-Hee is conning Lady Hideko at the behest of Count Fujiwara. We then realize that Fujiwara and Hideko had conned Sook-Hee. This definitely caught me off guard, especially since I had grown to expect Sook-Hee to help Hideko because she had fallen in love with her. The problem arises soon after this, when we learn that Hideko was actually conning Sook-Hee with Fujiwara. This isn't a major problem, I only think that this realization should've been saved for the end of the film.

Anyways, I'd absolutely recommend this movie. It's one of the best thrillers I've seen come out in quite a long time.

This movie had me interested, then I was uninterested, and then it got me interested again, and then I was uninterested again.

This review's gonna be a long one, where I pretty much explain the entire movie and then point out the parts of it that don't make any sense. Skip to the end if that's all you want to see.

The summary of this movie claims that a small town detective is investigating the kidnapping of a child. We soon learn that this crime may be connected to a series of past child-murders through the discovery of a green pocket knife. Apparently the killer has a bunch of green pocket knives and he buries all of his victims with them.

There's drama in the detective's house. His wife (Jackie) has cheated on him and his son (Connor) is angry. Strange things happen in this house, as if there were an intruder. At one point, the the wife's lover shows up and gets hit in the head with a mug. We are to assume this was the angry son. The lover is brought into the basement where he is killed my someone. Possibly the Connor (as the Jackie assumes) or more likely an intruder attempting to frame the son.

At this point we're given a parallel story about a couple of young adults, one of whom is an avid home invader (yet the two of them take this crime quite lightly...). One of these two (Mindy) witnesses the death of Jackie's lover at the hands of the detective himself (Greg). Is this a simple revenge plot?

Barer and her partner in crime (Alec) want to escape, but Alec has been playing pranks on the family (including throwing the mug at Jackie's lover) and for whatever reason, decides tranquilize and hogtie Connor and place him in the bathtub. While doing this, Alec places a green pocket knife in a bar of soap... Is he the child murderer?

Alec and Mindy get into an argument and Alec pushes her down some stairs. Mindy loses consciousness, so Alec decides to put her in the trunk of Greg's car... Greg and Jackie find their son tied up and panic. Jackie takes Connor to the hospital, while Greg drives into the woods, gets out of the car, and disappears for a moment. In this moment, Mindy wakes up and finds a camper with some kidnapped children tied up inside. Greg (the detective) comes up behind her and knocks her out.

Greg returns home and now decides to search his house for the intruder who tied up his son. Greg also kills Mindy, placing a gun that he had for some reason into her hand, making it look like she was trying to kill him. Alec confronts Greg. He knows that he is the murderer, and is also responsible for the series of child murders years before. Alec was one of the children that Greg tried to kill, hence why he had the green pocket knife. Alec kills Greg, Greg's partner shoots Alec, but Alec survives and exposes Greg.

So, why did Alec decide to tie up Connor? That goes quite a bit beyond his usual pranks like turning the TV on randomly... Why did Alec stab a knife into the bar of soap? Was is just so we'd see that it was the same green knife from before? Why did Greg drive into the woods and just disappear for no reason, right after his son was tied up by a home invader? He wasn't in his camper, so where was he? Where did Greg get this second gun? If it's his gun, the police will be able to trace the gun back to him... Also, why did Greg's partner shoot Alec on sight? Was he also involved in the child abductions? You can't just shoot a guy on sight like that, but whatever.

All in all this movie was entertaining at parts but there were just too many instances of sloppy writing for me to give this anything higher than a score of 'slightly above average.' Otherwise it's fairly well made, the acting is fine, and the music is actually quite disturbing.

I really enjoyed this movie. Some have complained that it wasn't very funny, and while I agree, I really just don't think it's meant to be all that funny. It's quirky in a way, but certainly not comedic, just light hearted. There are two examples of small, fourth-wall breaking moments, and I'd prefer if they weren't in the movie at all, but aside from those, the movie was played fairly straight. I really don't know why it's advertised as a comedy in the first place.

As others have said, the acting was terrific, and the sea shanties really set in a light hearted, murder mystery mood. This movie gave the feeling of watching a classic who-fun-it on a rainy night. The scale was small and intimate. The characters who memorable and eccentric all in their own ways. The story was simple and tight, and the pacing was good as far as I'm concerned.

There is one issue with the plot, which has been brought up before. Why not just call in the crime as self-defence. I suppose the writers tried to eliminate this as an option by having Mary Beth use a brick to smash the man's face in (and thereby showing an excessive amount of force more descriptive of murder) but when we saw his body, it wasn't all that damaged.

Still, I was thoroughly entertained as this simple thread of a murder was woven into a web, with a new member of the townsfolk at each end. If you're interested, I'd recommend grabbing a cozy blanket, dimming the lights, and sinking into a nice couch to experience this film.

This movie is not as good as I was expecting, given its ratings. The premise is essentially that Kevin Bacon gets hypnotized and as a result, is able to see a variety of things, including ghosts, past events and future events, sometimes all mixing together. He switches from being disturbed by this new ability, to captivated by it. Sometimes he wants it gone, sometimes he obsessed over it.

Eventually the story comes together. A girl from the neighbourhood went missing and Kevin Bacon's son begins to communicate with her spirit. This girl appears to Bacon himself at times, but not in any clear way. We find out from a police officer/weird ghost whisperer guy, who's apparently in some sort of clubhouse for ghost whisperers, that the ghost girl is getting (for no good reason) angry. Only Kevin Bacon's wife learns this information however, and for whatever reason, she decides to keep it to herself.

Kevin Bacon then spends a good amount of time digging around his property, presumably for the girls body. Eventually, after tearing up his house, he finds her body and envisions the murder of the girl by the two sons of his friends in an awfully dated and PG-rated rape scene.

Now, this scene set my opinions in stone. Taking the subject matter of the story, which is a supposedly brutal attempted rape and murder, and dumbing it down to the level of cheesiness that it was, is insulting and eye-rolling. The filmmakers could have really made a disturbingly dark movie - after all, it's supposed to be a horror about people seeing ghosts. Instead, the movie often has the feeling of some boner-comedy-horror (exaggerated by the parents frequent partying, another elements which I didn't understand given their age), with some thrown in jump-scares and a semi-serious plot for a backdrop.

Now, not every scene was ruined. Kevin Bacon was pretty good for much of the film, even when he was given some stupid dialogue or character decision. His sister in law however, was taken straight out of a late 90s sitcom, and ruined every scene she was in.

The movie was decently entertaining and had a somewhat interesting premise. It's a slightly above average movie, but I wouldn't go around saying it's some sort of hidden gem.