jabberfest

Rating: 2/10 (30 April 2018)

Eight characters are holed up in a shack together in a blizzard. Not all of them are who they profess to be. Even as a premise, this strikes one more as a stage play than as a film. And the confined spaces and dialogue-reliant plot only further detract from any cinematic experience. A stagecoach stops to pick up a potential passenger. A long dialogue exchange ensues. Then there is another passenger, and another long exchange. Then the four passengers in the stagecoach have a long conversation. They finally arrive at the layover station, where four more travellers await them, and lots and lots of long conversations. This endless jabbering is bad enough, except it is not very funny or dramatic. It's all a bit bland. Samuel L. Jackson going on tediously about stew, long past the mark where everyone got the point, is one egregious example. It is also symptomatic of how the audience is either way ahead and waiting for the film to catch up, or 'surprised' by some revelation that we don't really care about. In sum, this is one of the worst scripts to make it to film in decades.