1 1/2 out of 5
I passed this one up when it initially released. I was a huge fan of director Peter Jackson’s early gonzo-horror films but felt bored by his excessively long and CGI heavy Lord Of The Rings trilogy and King Kong reimaginings. Oh well. This is what Netflix is for, right?
This has the same issues as the above mentioned films. It’s a long slog at just under three hours, and the CGI astral plane our protagonist finds herself in is painfully uninteresting. There are moments where the old Jackson peeks through when we find ourselves in the harsh real world where a young girl is butchered by her neighbor. These scenes are impactful and jarring, especially when contrasted against the pop music and neon colors of Almost-Heaven.
Everything pre-murder is solid enough. We meet Sophie Salmon (Saorise Ronan) and her nuclear all American family. She dreams of being a photographer and shoots roll after roll of film, she bickers with her siblings, and daydreams about kissing a dreamy British boy who’s into poetry and wearing black turtlenecks. All that changes when Mr. Harvey (Stanley Tucci) lures her into a bunker he’s dug and kills her. Apparently the book doesn’t skip out on the gruesome reality of these kinds of crimes, with Sophie being raped, murdered, and dismembered. This movie navigates around that by having astral spirit Sophie run away (passed the weird Goth girl who sees ghosts?) and off into a nicer version of the Insidious franchises The Further, where she sees her killer in a muddy bath, surrounded by bloody clothes.
What ensues from here on out feels like two separate movies. One is an excellent family drama as The Salmons fall apart and come to grips with their loss. Rachel Weisz and Mark Walhberg are great, as is Stanley Tucci. The film wisely follows several perspectives as we watch father Jack run frantically through every scenario while Mr. Harvey observes from a distance only a few houses away. It feels painfully plausible and the screenwriters do well to address the Police’s lack of interest around missing children in the early 70’s before our understanding of serial killers. It’s frustrating and agitating because it’s very well shot and extremely tense.
At the same time we’re punished with Sophie’s after life, an amorphous churning world of childish delights that she frolicks through with her (presumably) after life spirit guide Holly. They dress up in disco clothes and dance on spinning records, jump into and out of fashion magazines, and other goofy shit. These scenes warp around each other and feel absolutely totally out of place with everything else we’ve seen. Maybe this is in the book and Jackson is adapting it as best he can, but it feels excessive and almost insulting to the audience. We’ve just been through a harrowing scene that we know ended with this little girl being brutalized, and somehow going to the top of Gumdrop Mountain to ride rainbows on skateboards seems to trivialize that.
As the family deteriorates and time passes Mr. Harvey gets comfortable and begins plotting his next target: Sophie’s younger sister. The movie set up implies that Sophie’s story arc is going to stopping this event happening. My thought was that she would save her sister, get the bad guy, and then her soul could pass on. Oh lord was I wrong.
Her sister figures it all out and uncovers the truth by breaking into Harvey’s house. Harvey escapes and dumps Sophie’s body into the local sink-hole-slash-garbage-dump (and on the day it’s gonna get filled in, dontchaknow) and skips town.
Astral Sophie can’t break free of her earthly bonds until she possess the body of Goth Girl so that she can finally kiss British Boy. She’s doing this, naturally, while her body is being disposed of ten feet away. I assumed she’d scream, “Hey, fuckface, that weird sweaty guy is dumping my body RIGHT THERE! It will give my suffering family closure!”
But no. She uses another woman’s body to kiss her crush. Her actual body sinks nearby and is covered over, her killer gets away only to be killed later by an icicle while in the act of trying to snatch another lady, and her family is happy enough again so credits roll.
When this movie works it’s an enthralling, tense thriller. When it doesn’t it veers into smaltzy, laughably sentimental Young Adult romance bullshit.
I can’t say this is a recommendation. The performances are really good even when the dialogue and direction isn’t. The story has impact when it allows itself to. Tucci’s performance is creepy and the amount that they look in at his world is fascinating. They crafted a very real feeling serial killer in Mr. Harvey. He makes other cinematic serial killers like Buffalo Bill or Hannibal Lecter look like cartoon characters. I can’t help but wonder what this would be if it could’ve been R rated instead of PG-13 teeny bop date nite material.
Not that I would’ve wanted more violence, far from it, but the gravity of the horror inflicted on Sophie isn’t handled appropriately here. The phrase “there was a lot of blood” and the brief visual of a bloody sack hint at the reality of these kinds of killings without imbuing them with any weight. I understand why a tasteful approach is preferable, but it ultimately comes off as slightly confusing. What happened to Sophie in that corn field? What kind of monster is Mr. Harvey?
If you don’t mind dark psychodramas intercut with visuals lifted from Teletubby Land then give it a try. If not then go read some true crime books. That’s probably more satisfying in the end.
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