Josh Pelfrey – Google

I gave it an extra star for the lighting looking neat. Holy hell, not one likable or sympathetic character in the whole movie. Just so many assholes who would NEVER be friends locked inside this plot. It is so smashed down into the shape of a movie but it kind of needs to be a series where each character gets a backstory that we see, and we can really latch onto the names, I had no idea who was who 90% of the time and rather than frustrating it just turned my interest off.

I think this is best described as magical realism. Something fantastical happens and people mostly just roll with it as part of their life and their situation and just something they have to deal with. The idea of a guy stuck is a maze of his own creation unable to leave because he can't bring himself to finish it but his friends eventually help him to focus and get out... I've been there. If anything the metaphor is too obvious. Doesn't help that Dave kind of looks like me, and Gordon looks and sounds so much like my old roommate that the movie also felt like it was made by us in some kind of magical fugue state. Biggest compliment I can give it is the endless fantastical art and production design. Just so many cool ideas for artistically exploring the fantastical world inside of a cardboard maze. The only reason I gave it a four is that I am not sure I would recommend this to everyone. It is a vibe and there are so many people in my life I could picture saying "I hated this" that I can't give it a blanket endorsement. It is good. And if the words "Hipster Narnia" has any appeal to you, then this movie will likely entertain.

There's Something Wrong with the Children

It is well produced, the camera moves, the lighting, all the props and actors look good, none of that fails. It is entirely the script which (almost at the exact mid point of the film) takes a turn into complete non-logic and never recovers. And in many ways just keeps getting less and less coherent right up to the end. A big issue is the framing. You spend the first 2/3rd's of the movie with the character of Ben only for the entire narrative focus to shift over to his wife Margaret which destroys narrative flow. Logically the movie should have spent equal time and given equal importance to all 4 of the adults so that the audience would not know who the "hero" of the story is and would be able to keep guessing at what is going to happen. Even that kind of change would not help with the absolute nonsense as it relates to, "I would like to report the murder of a child" being met with a single park ranger showing up several hours later. You have snapped the verisimilitude of the movie over your knee with a crack.

The movie is good for 10-15 minutes and then an absolute parade of stupidity and contrivance compound on the plot till it becomes non-functional. I would forgive all that if it wasn't such a waste of time. This is a 40min story told in 90. The actors are all boringly attractive and give unremarkable and unchallenging performances. I cannot see why people would like it, reading these other reviews confounds me. Radius is boing and weak.

I feel like I am comparing this movie unfavorably to a hypothetical better movie this one had all the parts to make. Overall it is pretty good, I think that there are ideas that could have been explored more and without that further exploration the movie feels too thin or rushed. I think that the main monster-child needed to talk more to explain where they are coming from. As is he is indestructible and can fly saying he is above or better than everything, but he is also so comically petty and violent on such a personal level. Either he is a psychopath or he is motivated by some character defect, this movie kind of falls in the middle.

This movie is deeply wounded by how long it takes the non-"evil" characters to get with the program. I get it, but it is strange how not one person ever volunteers to be who dies in order to try and keep everyone else alive longer. The villain's ultimately stated goals and their methods are so cartoonishly evil that it undermines the previously interesting, "my back is to the wall, I must do horrific things" evil of the earlier confrontations. The violence is impactful, it is too short to wear out its welcome, the core cast give it their all, but it ultimately does not have some kind of spark to push it to being good. It is fine. I will never watch it again. I will not recommend it to anyone.

This is one of the most boring films I have finished. I compare it to other journalism thrillers (The Post, Spotlight) or serial killer films (Mindhunters, Zodiac) and it just feels its length at every step. So many instances of cliche, "I guess we have to have this in the movie" conflict dialogue. There is maybe a good 75-90 minute movie in here if the movie were to cut out all of the cliche and so much of the slow ponderous music playing over people thinking about something while showing no meaningful emotion. Skip.

This has the feel of a well produced and mildly gory adaptation of a Goosebumps book. You get wishes, but the people around you suffer and the wishes are all twisted and backfire and there is ultimately an ending that still punishes the protagonist. The ending is not clever and feels like a massive cheat. This movie missed the mark by not going full on horror comedy, which I think would have elevated it considerably.