Reviews

Ok so I admit I stayed to the end, but more to see how much sillier it could get than anything else. I started to fall away from it when the gun came out and hubby expertly shot the intruders. Not once did Meera think, "where did this man I've been married to for 12 years learn to shoot like that?" And despite that there seem to be no police investigations, no legal aftermath, no trauma of any note for either of them. When Meera leans where the intruders live she goes to the trailer park and wanders around without anyone noticing her until the end of the scene. When she discovers the extremely large and elaborate secret dungeon hubby has built as part of their house, she goes into it by herself and finds the missing girl but of course is captured by hubby, who ties her up, yet she mysteriously escapes and the girl mysteriously undoes her gag...I could go on. I always wonder in these cases how such a huge and heavily fortified lair could be built (under his own home) without anyone's noticing or remembering or what...Anyway I'm rambling. This movie is more fun for its obvious mistakes and clichés than it is for its plot, characters, etc.

A top candidate for worst movie I've ever seen. Totally scattered, illogical, wearying, and lacking a satisfying build of either character or plot. Hall is unsympathetic from the beginning, so there's nowhere to go as the movie progresses. Her 8-minute monologue is tedious and should have been the first third of the movie: Remember, it's show, don't tell! Her overprotectiveness regarding her daughter is just repulsive and her daughter has to spend most of her screen time being either a bitch or her mother's victim. The whole conceit that Tim Roth has a baby inside him is just ridiculous and silly and the Grand Guignol scene near the end to recover it from his body is just risible, not horrific or cathartic. Several scenes that were supposed to elicit gasps garnered laughs instead from the preview audience I was in. I don't think the director really knew how to pace the movie or determine how reality and non-reality were supposed to be woven together. What was real or in Hall's mind? Do we care? Not really. Where did that baby come from? I didn't care because I'd given up by the end of the movie. A genuine waste of time and talent.

This film begins with a man bringing a baby home to his wife and telling her not to worry about where it came from. Soon, she's awakened in the middle of the night by a man who tells her to get moving while packing thousands of dollars from her husband's closet into a bag. Something has gone wrong and Eddie is nowhere to be found. A captivating premise! As the movie progresses, it becomes clear that Eddie is not just a thief but a killer who has likely been killed by the men looking for the money, so his wife has to run, protected by a mysterious man. Again, a very interesting twist on the usual crime story. But then things bog down and become farfetched and just inexplicable instead of creating more tension and intrigue for the viewer. Most egregious is the last 20 minutes, which fail to account for anything or tie up any loose ends, instead opting for a self-conscious ending that tries too hard to be arty in a vague and unsatisfying way.

One of the most, if not THE most, appalling movies I have ever seen in over 50 years of going to the movies. I hardly know where to begin in describing its badness. It's in a category of its own, really. Brutal, absurd, unfunny, and tasteless, its lack of any redeeming qualities is matched only by the cravenness of the people who made it. Imagine every cop movie cliche: death of a partner, neglected and resentful daughter, a case that's being "kicked up to the Feds," a big score that's "going down" right when the cop is supposed to be at his kid's big art show, a crooked cop, and on and on. Then add massive gunfights with plenty of heads spurting blood, a death in the first five minutes of a character meant only to give the cop another reason to be on the case. Give the cop LASIK surgery so he has to stumble around and use Uber. Add "jokes" that are as limp as cooked spaghetti and as dated as The Terminator and Sade (both in actual use here) plus the ongoing humiliation of Kumail Nadjani's Uber-driving character as well as of the actor, and you get a movie that almost literally made me sick. The only thing worse was hearing so many people in the audience laughing at the violence and not at the jokes. Some movies you just don't like; some, like this one, are objectively bad. Bad in their conception, bad in their execution, bad in their spirit. Even though we saw it for free I feel like 20th Century Fox owes me at least $15.00 and an apology. Revolting.

Not a single scary moment, not a single unpredictable thing. After a tedious introduction to the family, all hell breaks loose and just keeps going with lots of scary eyes, standing in place, telegraphed events, revenge-y violence and I could go on and on. So many holes that weren't filled: How did the doubles find their doubles? Who managed to put together that huge project without anyone knowing? Why was it located under an amusement park? Where did they get all those red coveralls and shears? Who cares? Not me. Plenty of almost scares, then nothing...Dialogue minimal and banal when it managed to happen. The "twist" at the end had me yawning. I dare you to tell me how incredibly metaphorical or social-commentary-oriented this movie is. Just a waste of time, energy, good actors, and pixels. Fortunately, I saw it for free. The trailer is the only scary thing about this misbegotten movie. Sometimes you shouldn't let a person be writer, producer, and director, no matter how good his first movie was (Which it was).