This movie lacks all things basic storytelling requires. It drags on for like 60 minutes at this snail's pace and then 20-ish minutes of actual progress and then 10 minutes of "WTF?". And then it pulls a twist that comes out of left field. I see all these positive reviews going, "Oh man, did not see that twist coming." then it wasn't a good twist. A good twist is supposed to come logically from what you've seen before. If it comes from absolutely nothing, then it's not a good twist.
And then there's the dialogue.... Sounds like a BookTok gone wrong. The cursing feels so forced that it's edgy for the sake of edgy and not earned. It's just, "Oh we haven't dropped one in 30 seconds. Time to have Winona or Brianne do it!"
And the hints are so in your face about what Kath is going to do at the end that it's not even funny. The suspense is 100% in the musical cues and definitely not in the writing.
Even the climax had me going, "Wait. That's it? No fight? No struggle? Just, "Yep! That's the movie!"
This movie failed at all the basic things that make a thriller a thriller. Eli was very clearly out of his depth with this.
Then there's the acting. I don't see what people mean by getting a great performance from Winona Ryder. I freaking LOVE Winona Ryder and she can definitely carry a film, but this film ain't it. Everybody's acting is so flat and emotionless that I couldn't get any hint of what the characters were thinking. Oh wait, sorry. I'm wrong. I knew what they were thinking because they flat out said every single thought they had!
Then, comes the fake-twist with Winona that ends up being a ploy... The thing is that it's meant to be a fake out that sounds smart and acts as a distraction. Except it doesn't work because for a ploy to function it needs to be believable, either to the characters or to the audience, and this film failed that so hard.
Also, the cuts! So many cuts! Any time any hint of tension arrives, the music builds up a little and then, NOPE! New scene! Does the cut or even the new scene help add to the tension? Nope! It starts in the most mundane way possible so it needs to rebuild the tension. Yes, stories have ups and downs. But it's supposed to be like a roller coaster. This is more like a roller coaster that starts out flat and then goes up like five feet and then falls again only to gradually go back to five feet up just to fall back down and start all over again. And this happens over and over and over again. That's not tension, it's a failure to launch.
So... What exactly is the message/theme of this film? Is it that aging is scary? Death is scary? If so, why is that not prevalent in the film? If your film is going to have a theme it needs to be IN THE FILM. Not just thrown in to pretend it's a plot twist.
I wish I could have anything positive to say about the film. I do. But all the actors in it are usually pretty great and they all just sucked in this! I'm not blaming the actors for it, I'm blaming the writer/director. How on earth THIS got greenlit is beyond me.
Best to stop now. I wasted about 90 minutes of my life watching this. And now I wish his experiment worked so I could regain that lost youth.