David Hall

As many other people have stated, the initial buildup of the movie was VERY slow. I kept waiting for something to happen. At first, based on the tones and music, I thought it was going to something similar to some of the M. Night Shyamalan movies (which I tend to enjoy). It didn’t. The movie just never went anywhere. Plot development was terrible. Julia Roberts’ character is supposed to be the mom who is getting the family to take a vacation, but she is really just a Karen. There is way too much usage of the “F” word in the movie. That doesn’t usually bother me, but it didn’t at all go with what was happening. It more felt like someone said “we have to have this 167 times in the script so we’ll just throw one here, here, and here.” The overt racism in the movie, as evidenced by the young adult girl implying that she didn’t feel safe because white people were in the house was completely over the top, had no reasoning, and was just another distraction. There were so many questions raised that were never answered. Why was one section called “the flood” when there was no flood, just some rain? Why did the pool fill up with flamingoes? Why we’re there hundreds of deer that just came to stare at the family? (Obviously, that part was written by someone with no knowledge of animal behavior.) All of the deer in the movie were bucks so what happened to the does and fawns? How did some random bug bite make the kid’s teeth fall out? So many questions!!! You find out about midway through the movie that there was some kind of cyber attack, but that wasn’t developed at all. And the ending of the movie with the kid just sitting down and turning on the last episode of Friends simply made me ask what in the world did I just waste the last two hours of my life on?? Come on people. I expect more out of Julia Roberts and Kevin Bacon.