Lawless Horror Movies Are Never Good

Rating: 3/10 (17 January 2019)

They got a very good cast, an award winning director, and well received source material to build off of. There is a lot going for this movie going in, but unfortunately it loses something in the translation. The script is atrocious. Everything is done to the best of everyone's ability, its just that it isn't that good.
The discourse between characters is abhorrent and I can't blame Sandra Bullock or John Malkovich. They deliver their lines very well, its just that what they say is often head scratchingly stupid. For example, Greg (BD Wong) wants to try to see the creatures through his security camera, which is an acceptable line of thinking. It sets the precedent that you don't need direct line of sight for the monster to effect you. But its how he tries to explain his plan, trying to blind the audience with an overly sciency, not scientific, explanation about waves and heat distortion that hearing aloud makes his plan even less convincing. Then he looks at it through a regular camera and kills himself because that couldn't have been a stupider idea. This issue comes up constantly, nothing sounds right. Malorie (Sandra Bullock) starts talking to her sister about going out for drinks while pregnant after her ultrasound in front of her doctor, to which the doctor replies with a mildly miffed equivalent to "I'll pretend I didn't hear that." Tom (Trevante Rhodes) is written like a 80s cartoon character, he is perfect in every way and devoid of any reasoning. He is ready to help anyone without so much as a thought to self preservation and does so pretty much of his own accord. Douglas (John Malkovitch) gets it pretty bad, he is just engrossed with all the negative traits Tom lacks and painted to be the jerk of the group in spite of an impressive track record on being right. This culminates in the "Make the apocalypse great again" which is supposed to remind everyone that he is the callous jerk as everyone rolls their eyes at him, but its just so out of left field that it is blatant why it was written in. Its not a condemnation of him, they've already done that the entire movie, its an insult towards half the movie's potential audience. The sudden flash of elitism wouldn't have been half as insulting had the movie been written more intelligently, its like being called an idiot by a D student.
The monsters themselves have no rhyme or reason. There is never an explanation of what they are or where they are from. This isn't in itself a negative as left to the audience's imagination they can probably conceive of something better than the writer could have imagined. What isn't acceptable is that there is no explanation of what they can do. They give a bare minimum explanation that the sight of it will cause madness or suicidal depression, but that's it. Everything else is hypothesized but is then conflicted with new evidence. At first, the monster is thought unable to interact with the real world, and thereby can't open doors, but then shakes a car and jostles leaves. It has the ability to speak at the end, but it leaves a question as to why it doesn't do so early on from behind the door. There is nothing that explains why one person becomes suicidal and another crazy but infers at the end that there is a way to differentiate them from normal people through their eyes. This is never explained how nor the validity tested. So in the end, things happen and there is no explanation. You just got Happening-ed.
The worst is yet to come however as it seems they ran out of material and just shoestring whatever they had together in convenience and blatant plot armor for the final act. The plot is told through flashbacks that pointed out who wasn't going to make it like a red shirt on Star Trek, as the three survivors of the group, Malorie and the two children, raft down a river to sanctuary. Then come the rapids. The audience is aware that they are the looming threat by this point and we were left at a cliffhanger as one of them is going to have to navigate. Instead of what you expect to happen, they decide to go blind and immediately capsize. Making it to shore, Malorie must quickly find the kids and its far more anticlimactic than this sentence would lead you to believe. Still blindfolded she finds them in less than a minute and they continue through the woods as they rush to bring it all home. They don't care anymore, they open a can of cheap drama, and dump you in an unsatisfying ending where nothing is accomplished. This was the hook, the big event they were building up to, and its pretty much yada yada-ed. And to make it worse, the book handled it better by simply having Malorie take off her blindfold.
This movie would not have done well had it gone to theaters, had it been anywhere but Netflix it would have bombed. It tries to emulate A Quiet Place but somehow ends up feeling more like The Happening. It has short glimmers of hope and the cast did what they could, but the writing was just not there for them and they are left running from the wind.