A mawkish place

Rating: 6/10 (16 March 2020)

The trailer really made me want to see this but the moment I saw this movie being plugged on the Graham Norton show, my heart sank. I have no issue with mainstream movies or movies from big companies and I hate it when people are snooty toward them. But horror is slightly different. When horror is made for a general audience, rather than people who breath the genre, that's when things go wrong.
The Director actually pegged the very issue with the movie when he said he felt it was a movie "more about family". Did he think he was being fresh and original? Movies like that are ten a penny, within and without this genre of science fantasy adventure. A direct, unbiased depiction of people in desperate circumstances committed to being terrifying that is well made...now that would be something.
Even if we choose to not call it a "horror" movie, just some kind of macabre adventure, it's not like I have a problem with pathos in either. I think it can really enrich a picture about physically terrifying things when we get characters we can see ourselves in, whose plight moves as well as chills us, what some people would call "making it human".
But there is a significant difference in pathos and sentimentality. A story, especially a monster movie like this, needs to earn its sentimentality by giving us characters that we can relate to with time to make our own minds up about them. This movie oozes a certain smugness about how it is some kind of hip, new age,tear jerker-horror, and although a lot of scary stories have been improved by having that kind of element to it (Silent Hill 2, Eyes without Face) the handling here is just a bit too aggressive. The cinematography zooms in to wring out the feels, the simpering performance from the Dad who always looks incredulous to something he's just seen and the elegiac tendency of the score all add to this.
One particularly sickening scene was the Dad dancing with the mother, I know that sounds innocuous but just wait and see how they visualize it. This tonal approach does not only make it hard for me to lose myself in the dark story it should be telling but also makes me struggle to really believe anyone is in a a huge amount of danger. Toy Story 3 was able to put me on the edge of my seat even when I knew there's no way Woody wouldn't survive to see the next one. But here the plot armor just feels too thick. Whether I was right or not to assume that is besides the point, a story is a journey as much as the destination. Thus a lot of what the movie does well is kind of wasted on itself.
I've been very negative so far but as my numerical rating would suggest it isn't really half bad (if you keep your expectations low like me). It's engaging for all the reasons you expect it to be. It has a good concept, a certain amount of atmosphere (reduced dialogue and sound is a bit of a cheat code to that but whatever), a lot of interesting logistics on how they maintain this lifestyle and several well crafted moments of suspense with a superbly convincing set of special effects.
To keep myself amused I watched with French subtitles which you can do on Netflix at the moment. And no, I did not miss nuances because of that if I my toot my own horn.
The rest of this review will be mainly me listing all the particular small things that annoyed me about this movie:
1) They flash up what day number it is. Tell your story visually please, obliging non-diegetics are not scary.
2) They show their menace WAY too early. The first time showing it should have been that scene with the nail. And they have a cliche sound too. They could have done so much more to stagger how much we glimpsed at what time but they didn't.
3) The daughter is deaf. Really. And it is just a coincidence. An audience can take one coincidence sure, but any motivation for this coincidence comes way too late. Now I think about it maybe the family survived this long because they already knew ASL? I'm still annoyed though.
4) Too much back story. The crux of horror is mystery. I don't want to know there are exactly 3! Just make them different colors or something.
5) The mother. Emily Blunt's obnoxious portrayal and the irritating characterization made me hope if one person got killed it would be her. "Who are we if we can't take care of our kids?" Shut up!
6) On that note she is pregnant for most of the movie. I am really sick of pregnant people in horror movies. It does have relevance to the plot to be fair rather than being there strictly to manipulate us into feeling for her rather than actually giving her a personality that doesn't suck. I'm not really mad that they made her pregnant, my problem is that they were a bit...*family values* about the whole thing if you know what I mean.
7) The final seconds of this before the credits had my raising a particular finger and saying " f&Â£# you, movie".
8) This is something I have only learned reading the FAQs but apparently the creatures are known to have arrived on Earth from a meteor. I mean, I missed it so I guess it was pretty subtle (or maybe my French isn't actually as good as it could be), but it is such a rookie mistake to outright tell us where they're from. I know the cosmos is a big place I'd rather have the origin of the creatures a mystery. But this is emblematic of how one should not think of this as a horror movie; to do so is to ask to be annoyed.
In conclusion, we were not cheated exactly but we were spared a classic because they were in denial about what genre this move really is.