Reviews

You guys gotta lay off the nostalgia for real.

This was a mind numbingly boring film that you've talked yourselves into believing was something amazing for no other reason than eye candy and nostalgia.

Don't get me wrong, some of my favorite films are around 3 hours long and some of them are nothing but talking. It's not about a lack of action, it's about a bunch of cardboard cutout characters looking like roided up smurfs acting out the most tired tropes you've ever seen in movies (although I guess this assumes you've actually seen more than 10 movies).

The plot and character decisions make zero sense if you spend a single brain cells worth of effort on them, which you'd think you'd have more than enough time to do with how much water treading downtime there is here. Not that it really even matters anyway, because the final insult is the ending basically just openly being "lol nothing you just saw really mattered and we're just gonna do the EXACT same again next time too"

I can sort of understand why kids went nuts for Avatar back in the day and formed a nostalgic attachment to it, even though it's not that good of a movie, but why are we still pretending this is impressive again 20 years later? This one is even worse and we all know the only reasons you're pretending it's not.

After the disappointing Crawl and 9th Life of Louis Drax , I wasn't going to bother watching any more of his films, but I was bored and it's free on NetFlix so what the hell, right? My mistake.

What clearly wanted to be the next Cube type of movie, ended up just being a cold, clinical parceling out of small bits of information and plot contrivances that existed only to fill the run time of an otherwise super basic concept.

Wow, you're in space? Did anyone not immediately guess that from the trailer (or like...reading the name of the movie)? Like where else was she going to be? Either space or at the bottom of the ocean or there wouldn't even be a threat here. But ok, let's drop this near the end like a huge reveal that we're supposed to be blown away by. Sure.

And wow, it took you almost the entire movie to try to look outside the box? Really?? Gee that sure is convenient. Not as convenient as that magic AI though. That thing can make autonomous decisions to protect the occupant (except when it can't), can make phone calls (to other planets?), perform medical procedures automatically or on demand, and all sorts of other advanced futuristic functions, yet it randomly can't understand simple questions (whenever it's convenient to drag things out more) and I guess was programmed to be as obtuse and unhelpful as possible, and not willing to give vital information it possesses about the occupant because occupant either didn't phrase their question in the exact right way (even though they asked similar questions that would have resulted in the same answer earlier) or just "bEcAuSe YoU DiDnT aSk!"

We don't know anything about the character, so why are we supposed to care about them? We don't know anything about the situation except "AIR LOW", so beyond that why are we supposed to care? It's just a time wasting linear series of: INFO DROP -> ASK QUESTIONS UNTIL CORRECT QUESTION -> INFO DROP -> ASK QUESTIONS UNTIL CORRECT QUESTION -> INFO DROP and in the end none of the final reveal even really matters because with the convenient mystery box + amnesia setup, literally anything could be plugged into the end and it wouldn't have made any difference to the other 95% of the movie. It's not really a twist when there isn't any previous conflicting situation to be twisted away from expectations. It's just another INFO DROP in a pile of INFO DROPs that ultimately mean nothing.

I don't have a whole lot to say that others haven't already covered here. Cool looking dream sequences, underwhelming everything else.

Not sure why so many reviews are praising the lead actress. Sorry, but I found her pretty unpleasant. I get the feeling the movie was expecting me to find her likable and attractive too and....nah, not seeing it. The sex scene with a character that looks like a homeless child was easily the most disturbing part of the movie.

I have to admit, I was tempted to turn this one off around half way through too. The pacing is not great in the first half and it seems to just keep lingering on the not particularly interesting personal life of the not particularly likable main character and you start wondering if this is going to be one of those Open House type movies where it just endlessly hints at a climax that never arrives or another generic haunting/curse movie that's just 80 minutes of filler and 10 minutes of CG jump scares.

Eventually it does turn a corner into something much more interesting though. More pieces start falling into place and the almost painfully vague shape of the mysterious threat finally starts to become more clear, though you do have to pay very close attention to see all those pieces as some of them fly by so subtly or so quickly that you can easily miss them. The ending in particular ties it all together in a pretty powerful way that's going to have you thinking about it for a while.

Ultimately, to me, Wounds isn't really even a story about supernatural evil. It's a story about being hopelessly lost, hitting rock bottom, and looking to desperately fill that void with anything no matter how harmful it might be to yourself and others. In Will's case it was a supernatural entity that chose to take advantage of his emptiness, but he could have just as easily fallen into drugs, a cult, crime, a hate group, etc. I know because I used to be just like him. I was lucky enough to meet someone that snapped me out of it and helped me turn my life around, but I often think about how much further I could have fallen if things had been different, and it's a pretty scary thought, so you can see why this story could really hit home with me, and I can understand why someone who hasn't been through this (or is still in denial that they're currently going through it) wouldn't feel the same impact.

While I feel that Wounds stumbles a few times along the way, in the end it really had something to say. Something that you may find yourself turning around like a little puzzle box in your mind for some time after it concludes, and that's the mark of a story that's more effective than not to me. 8/10.

This has some of the most obnoxious sound design I've heard in a while. Typical generic horror movie where they massively overuse the emotional music cues and constantly beat you over the head with cheap overly loud jumpscare sounds and music. Honestly, if you didn't have the music telling you how you were supposed to feel, the lead actresses attempts at looking scared would probably make you think this was a parody. She goes full on Italian Spider-Man sometimes.

They also try to take the easy way out of explaining all the absolutely insane characters decisions and plotholes by slapping on what was very clearly a thrown together at the last minute "ambiguous" ending. Not sure what the point is because there are only two possibilities, the killer was real (but also had unexplained magic powers) or it was all in her head and she was the killer. Neither are original enough that dropping an ambiguous ending suddenly makes it clever and neither makes much sense because why is she not back in prison again either way and etc. Judging by some of the reviews it looks like it tricked some people into thinking it really was deep though, because apparently it really is that easy...

I've seen much, much worse, but it's still not a good movie. Just another forgettable bargain bin horror that's not even worth sitting through once. 4/10

This barely even qualifies as a horror movie, as the majority is just plain old drama between the four characters, which veers into a few short bursts of thriller, and then jumps into full-on, but very weak, horror only in the last 15 minutes or so. Good cinematography and good performances from Dan Stevens and the rest can't save this film from its own lack of content. It's just these four people on vacation with some slight drama mixed in by two of them having an affair, a "twist" that's telegraphed hard from the very first scene, and that's pretty much the whole movie. Then faceless mystery man shows up to dispatch the main characters in as quick, clean, and unceremonious fashion as humanly possible in the very end. That's really all there is to it.

It doesn't do anything new or interesting as a drama or a thriller and it fails miserably as a horror, so...what's there to like about this movie? It definitely felt like it was trying to be a bit like The Strangers (because wow no face, no motive = super scary for some people apparently?) except aimed specifically at what I'd imagine is a pretty small group of people with irrational fears of home-sharing. I guess the one nice thing I can say is that it at least it wasn't as vapid and braindead as The Strangers and the characters were more developed, but that's not saying much.

This is a watchable, but very forgettable movie that deserves somewhere in the 4-6 range at best. Believe me or don't, but I think it's pretty telling that most of the gushing reviews here don't seem to be able to offer any insight on the film beyond "don't listen to HATERS it's great! The end."