Oscar J. Griffiths

If I'm truly being honest, this is a very meh film all in all, It has a lot of cool concepts, ideas and set designs but all in all, it just falls super flat, Although the cast is steller, the characters have no depth apart from Ivy played by Bryce Dallas Howard. Joaquin Phoenix basically plays himself, Adrian Brody has a dull and predicatble character with a learning and social disability and every other character and cast member is forgettable with their flat performances which I'm sure is M. Nights fault over the talent of the cast. The dialogue and writing is incredibly cringy and meaningless, when speaking in an old English style the words should come across as poetic and meaningful but here it feels like a jumble of strange conversations that I don't think any natural person would make, The plot points are interesting and there are great moments of tension with some twists that caught me off guard, but it seems like they just fumbled the bag with some great ideas, SPOILERS!!! When Joaquin phoenix's character is stabbed by Adrien Brody, there's a good build up to his body being found by Ivy, however after this there feels to be no more emotional weight, Bryce's character just ends up crying for the next hour of the film but there's no powerful moment that pulls on the audiences heart strings, I think is is also due to the fact that Joaquin's character isn't pronounced dead (after being stabbed multiple times with no medicine from the doctor of the village to help his infection) which tell the audience 'he's not dead, so don't expect him to die', it would create a bigger impact if this did kill him and we could see the torment that Ivy goes through. Another element was the monster not being real, though a neat idea and concept, this wasn't a hard hitting reveal, if there was a consiricy within the village that was slowly uncovered over time then it would create more tension and make the reveal more hard hitting and less random, Also why hide one of the costumes under the floor board so Adrian Brody could... - break a wooden floor with his bare hands (somehow) - find the costume under the quiet space - break through the boarded up window (with his bare hands) - chuck on the costume - escape without anyone noticing one of the monsters casually leaving the village or Brody leaving with the costume So he could then... - Find Bryce - act like he doesn't see her (for some reason) - make monster noises - chace her (and miss even though she's blind) - and then fall into a hole and die Finally, the bug reveal at the end doesn't make any sense to me. They leave civilisation because all the elder members have had a loved one be murdered so they go and live in a wild life reserve. Fair enough but... - why not bring medical supplies with you? - why be stuck in the early 1900s? - why not just move country? - why make up a whole story about monsters living in the woods which has tormented and killed your own people? All in all, this is a film that had a lot of potential and great ideas and as always M. Night drops the ball. If this film is guilty of being anything, it's boring. Very dull, very meh but some cool ideas if it was created by a competent director, real shame.

It’s a mockery to the world of Tolkien and to cinema, I have to say that the cgi is incredible and so is the music but that would be as far as I’d have to say on the positives, each character is a copy of a character from the original Peter Jackson adaptation. It should come as no surprise that the writers are incredibly incompetent of making anyone feel like a real human being let alone view some of these characters as ‘heroes’. In the firstly, Galadriel, who was originally played by the wonderful Kate Blanchett in the original, is already well established as a powerful being in Tolkien’s world, for the love of god she has telepathy, which is already so over powered. She is also an essential part of Frodo’s quest to destroy the ring. So why oh why when it literally states that she ‘loves all living beings’ is she abandoning her men, fighting in the army and doing flips to kill a cave troll. The original tale was about the disc tricot on caused by greed and the strength in good things. This show is a pure example of the evil that Tolkien was against in his work. The world building was clearly made by a city person who has clearly never gone to a country side let alone abroad. The props look like something you can get from a halloween shop and to top off the rest NONE of the armour was made to look real or fit the actors they were made for. My hearts go out to the actors and poor souls forced to make this garbage, good waste of 1 billion or whatever,