Good first half than falls off a cliff

Rating: 6/10 (20 July 2018)

The first half contained mystery. Is Howard a monster who kidnapping Michelle for his own twisted reasons or is he an awkward good guy who is saving her and emmit's life out of human compassion.. It's an engaging question because weirdness does not equate to badness and maybe Howard will end up being a nuanced character, who despite his many pathologies is a good person inside and need some time and trust to show it. The surprise is there a door number 3. He's a nut and he's saving her. i liked the movie up until that point. Then the movie seems to lose interest in itself. The dialogue becomes loose, cheesy and the characters become horror tropes. the end barely makes sense and you get the feeling it's been rewritten 30 times and they desperately want to wrap it all up in something that is semi plausible. I'll watch just about anything with Mary Elizabeth Winstead. She can sit at a chair and table eating baked beans and I'm in. She was perfect. John Goodman was effective especially in the first half.. The second I saw Emmit i knew he was DOA. They were trying too hard to make him endearing and lovable and he was the barrier between Howard's and Michelle's alone time that the movie definitely was going to make happen. It's disappointing that a movie with so much promise would fail this hard as it went on. If you're bored and want a thriller slightly better than a B movie there are worse things to watch.