Well-made but lacking emotional investment

Rating: 6/10 (27 August 2016)

On a technical level, the movie is well-done. The directing is superb, and most of the acting is good. I love how the movie shows the urban decay of Detroit, making it look like a mix of suburban dream and war zone reality. At its heart, the movie is in many ways about broken dreams.
However, there is one huge flaw in the movie that, for me, completely knocked it down several pegs and undermined the entire thing, and that is that I disliked and felt no sympathy for no single character in it.
In order for suspense to work well, the viewer has to be invested in a character. If you don't care about anyone, you're not going to feel suspense when they are in danger. The characters in this are wholly unlikable and unsympathetic, despite rather shallow, cursory attempts at giving them sympathetic motivations.
I'm all for flawed, unlikable characters and anti-heroes. In fact, I prefer such characters. But there has to be something for the viewer to latch onto, something to invest in. Otherwise it's just watching people doing things on a screen.
If the movie weren't so well made on a technical level, I'd have ranked it much lower. I will definitely look for work by the director in the future. But this movie was disappointing, considering the high marks it seems to be getting from critics.