So Much Wasted Potential

Rating: 3/10 (21 March 2017)

I showed this movie to my teenage niece. She's becoming a horror fan and I've shown her a few films, The Shining, Scream etc. We watched this together. I asked her what she thought. Now I've taken film criticism classes and television criticism classes and anyone who has taken those classes knows, sometimes you end up way over analyzing things. She was only fourteen at the times, so I figured she would have a some what less clouded view of the movie. And ... she hated it. I asked her why. She thought it over for a second and finally answered "That girl stunk, she spent the whole movie looking bored or confused." And that pretty much summed it up. Now I love horror films and this film really did have a great premise. This thing doesn't run or appear in your dreams or call you on the phone, but it just never stops. And I liked the visuals also. I loved the whole throw back 70's vibe. But the characters, they are just not there. They have no real development, personality or characterization. Mostly they just stare off into space and look sad. And that, is really lame. This is a problem a lot of movie have nowadays. They adopt that Terrence Malick style, where all emotions and feelings are kept at an arms length. Movies like Foxcatcher or the Master have the same problem. I'm not saying everything in a movie should be spelt out in black and white but everything shouldn't be vague and ambiguous as well.
Its not very engaging.
And the main character Jay, she is just so meh. Look at Halloween, the character of Laurie Strode wasn't exactly Hamlet but she did have a personality and she was likable and in the end you wanted to see her save the children and escape Michael Myers. Same thing with Kirsty Cotton in Hellraiser or Sidney Prescott in Scream and a ton of other movies.
This movie is trying to emulate so many other horror and while it has some elements down pat, others it's missing entirely. At the end of the movie did anyone really care what happened to the Jay character. No, of course not.
I know the critics liked it, but no, just no.