Edge of your seat suspense

Rating: 8/10 (12 October 2014)

The story falls-prey to romance-novel clichés. Pikes character isn't exactly sympathetic or a heroine, but she's still a bit of a Mary-Sue. She's rich and beautiful and brilliant, and her main struggle is that of living in a gilded cage. Her romance with the male lead is twisted but still portrayed as genuine, a psychological kind of S&M. I am sure someone will read this and scoff and think "it's a satire that plays off of the clichés!" Yeah.... no, that's a cop-out.
There's this bizarre emphasis on appearances and "what do people think? Let's make an important TV appearance!", a theme of paranoia of constantly being watched, I had the same complaint about Hunger Games.
The ending was a real let-down. It didn't make sense and rubbed its depressing-ness in your face. It had this theme of "things suck but they have to end this way because... because... society". (Because the writer had little imagination.) What the couple goes through is nuanced food for thought about gender relations. The writer gives an unbiased portrayal of how heterosexual gender roles play out. In a way it is a little bit too unbiased, extremists will read into the movie the way they want to, I see it already with online discussions of the movie.
At the time watching it, the movie was very entertaining, I couldn't wait what to see what would happen next. The suspense and action builds and flows well. But in hindsight, it was sort of a letdown. The characters are all kind of weak and inconsistent when you get down to it. For example, Pike's character is supposed to be so smart and ambitious, but when the movie tries to prove it the evidence is much weaker than the writer seems to think it is. (Imagine you had a movie about a man who's supposed to be ridiculously strong.... Everyone talks about how strong he is! Then he comes on screen and they show him... carrying several bags of groceries as evidence of how strong he is. It was like that...)
And so in conclusion, I do recommend watching this movie. I hesitate to call it original, it's more like an original combination of familiar themes. It keeps you watching and makes you think a little.