Carol Douglass

If a student presented this movie for a project in my film class, he’d get a great big F. For acting: worst I’ve ever seen. The “star’s” a ting was painfully amateurish. The script: utterly absurd. Dialogue bizarre, disconnected. The whole thing had to be an amateur project. Semi-spooky music throughout, with the only payoff or revelation at the very end, and even that was as exciting as yesterday’s oatmeal. Really a collection of worst acting, worst cinematography, worst music, worst script. I hope the star doesn’t think he has a future in acting.

It appears the book form A Boy Called Christmas is hugely popular; the movie as well. I must say I enjoy movies set in Scandinavia, magical creatures, Toby Jones, Maggie Smith, Joel Fry, Stephen Merchant and Jim Broadbent. But there is one element that all but ruins the movie, in my opinion, and that is the amateurish performance of the boy Henry Lawfull. He is said to be a rising star, so perhaps I’m the only critic to object to his acting, but there you are. Lawfull delivers every line the way beginning child actors all do: noticeably too fast, and more annoying, in a deadpan monotone. One longs for excitement in his voice, for music in the lines, but every line ends in a downward pitch, as if he were reading the city traffic code. Listen to the young Haley Joel Osment, the young Dakota Fanning, the young Eric Lloyd, Freddie Highmore, Mara Wilson…numerous others: they simply do not speak in monotone, they’re full of expression in their voices, their faces, and their gestures. It may be that Lawfull has improved by now, but I am always perplexed when a child without liveliness and range of expression is chosen for an important role, and when it appears that the director was satisfied with the one-note performance. Entertaining movie otherwise, but I cringed with every one of Lawfull’s lines.

“Unhinged” may have cost a lot to make, given the dozens of cars smashed to pieces during it’s 90 minute run, but not a cent was spent on cleverness, originality, depth of meaning, plot twists, or anything else that makes a story worth reading or a film worth watching. From the first, a grossly obese Crowe shows the viewer exactly what this movie will contain: bloody, raging, graphic violence, and nothing else. The setup, radio reports laid over scenes of road and other rage, meant to explain how we got to the movie’s plot, is simplistic and obvious. Crowe’s first action tells us he’s a psychopath bent on revenge. And there you have it. The rest of the movie is a madman’s daydreams, or nightmares. After establishing that our heroine Rachel, [Caren Pistorius] is too overwhelmed by divorce proceedings to get up in time for work, we see her snarky comments to Crowe’s Tom Cooper lead to speeding cars, cars flying through the air, cars hitting abutments, cars crushed by massive trucks, and of course grisly murders by Cooper/Crowe. No one has the sense to call 911, neither friends nor onlookers or Pistons herself. In the end, we see the victorious Rachel drive her somehow still functioning after having been rammed red car, taking her son to school on time for a change. Although minutes before, she was punched repeatedly in the face by a 350-lb madman, not a hint of bruising shows on her pretty young face. She’s miraculously escaped the missing teeth, broken jaw, massive swelling and red and purple skin anyone else would have suffered. To harken back to the opening setup and to show she’s learned her lesson, thank you, she restrains herself from honking at a stupid driver. She and her son, who’ve witnessed murders and been terrorized, are happy and calm, just another day in the life of a divorcee. “Unhinged” is certainly what Crowe/Cooper is. But more unhinged is the producers trying to pass off this shallow, exploitative car wreck of a movie as worthy of watching.

Absolutely one of the worst movies ever. Terrible acting--the "star" is the worst--idiotic script, totally messed up action: no sense, no point, no direction, no plot movement. The star is moronic and unappealing and apparently an ex-con, whose pregnant wife is inexplicably successful, legit, and in love with this unfaithful thug. One thing--he looks and talks like the biggest dork there is, but also is a cheating, lying, criminal who finds it unsurprising that black slime pours from the walls. He's also so stupid that when more slime--grey this time--pours from the screw hole of a switch plate, he plugs an electric drill right into it. Unless the actor really is that dumb & simultaneously a felon, he does a great job of pretending to be one. I wouldn't be surprised if the whole script were written on scraps of toilet paper during a drug-fueled half hour break at work.

The plot of In the Dark could be interesting, or entertaining, enough to make watching it worth your time, even though it's thoroughly predictable and worn out. I say, "could be," because there are so many absurd details, and such poor acting by Perry Mattfield, the "blind" heroine, that it's more annoying than pleasurable. While it's true that people with retinitis pigmentosa have normal-looking eyes (because they have been sighted for 15 to 30 years before the condition obscures their retinas), Mattfield just isn't believable as a non-sighted person. She has a guide dog--which takes several years of waiting and training to get--that she ignores when he warns her, that she uses only randomly. Not likely. She moves, with arm up to protect her from running into things, not like a person who's been blind for years does in her own house but like a sighted person who's just had a blindfold put on. The hero as a drug-taking, alcoholic, sex-addicted, rude, obnoxious, "troubled" soul that's supposed to be sympathetic is so overdone, it's tedious. And that she's able to outsmart career detectives is just laughable. And can someone explain how a blind woman has perfectly styled hair, and heavy eyeliner, mascara, redrawn eyebrows, blush, and perfectly applied lipstick? At all times, even when she's half asleep, wasted, just out of bed? How ridiculous--can American viewers really not deal with actresses who aren't young and stunning and thoroughly made up? The Brits and Scandinavians seem to manage; could it be that those audiences are slightly less shallow? Suspension of disbelief requires at least a nod to reality. That's only a few of the things that make this Netflix movie, In the Dark, so not worth watching. My only excuse was that I was mesmerized by how tacky it is, but kept hoping for some spark of creativity and talent. There is in fact one bright spot, at the beginning, and that is the 18-year-old Canadian actor, Thamela Mpunlwana. In the short time he's on screen, he portrays the only likable character in the movie. How ill-judged that he's got the shortest screen time of anyone. How nice it would be if Netlix perceived their audience as deserving of actually intelligent, non-cliche, badly acted films. Would that they did.