A Long Day's Journey Into the Occult

Rating: 5/10 (9 June 2018)

This generations Exorcist? Mm no. More like our Burnt Offerings. There are some good things here, but what a mess. I was impatient and fidgeting through the entire thing, and judging from all the cell-phone browsing, many others were as well. Where to begin?
Okay, first, if your movie is heading into the heavy occult, there ought to be some clear foreshadowing and a somewhat crisp, linear path, sprinkled with recognizeable clues, for us to follow, rather than the murky, glacial slog that comprises most of this flick. It's just all over the place, and sloooowly. The events that might have been clues are presented as happenstance, e.g., Mom's attendence at a grief support group. What's more, she appears to begin the story a few cards short of a full deck, so her unraveling into madness becomes predictable, overwrought and, frankly, tiresome.
Then there is the WTF plot device of Peter taking his 13-year-old sister to a high school party. In what universe? It's silly and jars our willingness to suspend disbelief. And Peter himself, the natural son of this utterly Anglo couple, has obvious South-Asian genetics. You can do this kind of color-creative casting on stage, which is more like French Impressionist painting, but film is literally photography, and this casting is a puzzling visual non-sequitur. Are we supposed to wonder about Mom snagging an illicit quickie in the storeroom of the 7-Eleven? Was Ben Kingsley replaced as the father after shooting began? Yes, nagging questions.
Most of the inanities lie in the pace and story structure, garnering unintentional guffaws from the audience during what should be solemn moments. I liked where the story ended up, but felt ill-prepared for the arrival. Oh well, I guess Roman Polanski wasn't available for the rewrite.