Gigi Anders

While the movie is visually stunning, and I’m a cat lover, and it’s amazing how much universal emotion is conveyed wordlessly — I couldn’t. Animals in peril distress me to the point of not being able to breathe, and I’ve had the same nightmare since I was a child: drowning in deep, dark storm-tossed water from a high height. So, no. If you’re anything like me, and I hope you’re not, this movie will freak you out as much or more than any classic horror story. I kept worrying about how long the animals had gone without food and fresh water, about how much cats hate being in water, about how long a cat can hold its breath underwater, about animals attacking and eating each other, about no place safe and secure in an abstracted world of no people. Powerful stuff, and it may well happen to what’s left of our world, eventually. In the meantime, animals seeing their reflections in water at the end offered no solace. Just silence.

The movie is a splintered, moralistic, tedious downer. Diane Keaton plays herself, down to the last Annie Hall giggle, except now with fluffy hair and plain Jane clothes. The movie has none of the erotically-charged pulp that made the novel it’s based on so compulsively readable. And of course, Teresa’s a lapsed Catholic who has to die for being free. No thanks.

Here’s my problem with this series, which could have been more. The host.

I saw this with my stepdaughter, who has Down Syndrome. I asked her what she thought of the movie. “Really weird,” she said. “And really good.” I can’t think of a better description.