Count Dooku

Now it's down to 36% on opening day, but even the negative reviews contain praise for some aspects of the film like Pugh's performance. I think we know we are in a different era for movie-going than 20 years ago. If all the talk surrounding the film makes people curious, they'll save that for when it streams.

Interesting conundrum where critics have a problem with the story, but won't do spoilers to fully explain the issue. A lot of the criticism comes from people saying that the movie is trying to make a big point, but that it is obvious and handled ham-handedly. But that speaks to expectations. Audiences have never shied away from liking stories where things were obvious and the ideas were not original.

I saw Wilde's interview with Colbert, and I agree that there is an element of the knives being out for a woman director taking a big swing, but this was still a relatively low-budgeted film.

dex14

Shannon Nutt

Anyone else "take one for the team" and see this? I have a critic friend whom I line up pretty well with in likes/dislikes and he told me "It was a mess."

Count Dooku

Now that Ebert is gone, James Berardinelli is my go-to critic for an opinion I trust, and he was really hard on this.

Decker

I kind of wish I didn't have to go see this, but my Harry-crazy wife (who just came back from seeing him at MSG on Wednesday -- her third Harry Styles concert in a year) is going to make me go.

MysterioMan007

Yeah. It sucked.

sleepyhead55

Oh boy. My condolences. This is one scenario where falling asleep during a film is a positive outcome.

GoldenJCJ

I’m interested in seeing this (mostly for Pugh) but I’ll wait until it’s streaming. I’m not spending the time/money for the theater.

Decker

I’m going tonight. Kind of dreading it. My wife insisted that we bring our (surly) son along. I can’t wait to see how much he hates it.

Decker

Mysterio Man is right. The movie genuinely sucks. Some nice shots visually. Great hair styles. Liked the sets.
The classic cars were my favorite thing in the movie — they’re beautiful. And Florence Pugh is radiant and tries her best with this incomprehensible, inexplicable story. Give Chris Pine credit for being the only person who seems to realize how campy and silly the movie actually is.
But man the movie makes no sense, it’s an amalgam of several well-known better sci-fi films (and one recent genre TV show). The big reveal doesn’t really make any sense. And yes, the dancing girls were shown over and over again for no apparent reason. Yuck.

My son said “I think they could have shown Harry Styles and Florence Pugh having sex like five fewer times and we’d still get the point”

Even my wife admitted the film wasn’t good. But yes, she still thinks Harry was good in it.

Count Dooku

Such a precocious eight year old!

DaveNinja

Just saw this. Yeah it kind of sucked. The movie looks good and FloPugh is great. The story doesn't make much sense.

Decker

The movie’s position :

Ash Ketchum

If only...

GoldenJCJ

At least she has another chance when she drags you to The Policeman, which doesn’t look like it’s very good either.

Perkinsun Dzees

I was prepared to spit all over this movie, but in the end, I thought it was okay. Visually, it has a very captivating look to it, and Florence Pugh is as engaging and compelling as usual. Unfortunately, the storytelling is too repetitive and takes way too long to get to the big reveal of what's actually going on. And when the big reveal comes, it's not very original. If they had shaved off about 30 minutes from the running time, this would have made for a more effective thriller. As it is, it feels like a very average, overlong episode of the Twilight Zone.

asianxcore

Saw this early last night.

While the film is well-made, it doesn't offer anything particular that hasn't been seen in other similar films.

Florence Pugh holds up most of the film but parts of her performance feel like recycled bits from Midsommar (2019).

The finale peaked my interested but by then the film is (literally) racing to finish up.

TomOpus

I have a feeling I'll feel the same way, once I see it. Which is fine. I'm all about Florence.

Dr. DVD

Caught this yesterday. Having read the original script, they kept the overall narrative but changed a whole lot to where I wasn't totally spoiled. I agree with what everyone else has said. Visually and acting wise , especially from Pugh, this is really well done. However, the story isn't that great when it all boils down and it takes WAY too long to get to the point. Someone should have suggested to Wilde that she shave about 30 minutes off the movie as you can only watch Pugh freak out and have people not believe her so many times. The movie's ending also seemed like a result of running out of money more than anything else.

Crocker Jarmen

I really enjoyed the first two thirds of the movie. I thought the weirdness played out well, and I liked the sense that she was both in a strange situation as well as going crazy. My interest peaked at the dinner scene when she began challenging the Chris Pine character. That was dramatic, and it felt like she was starting to get an upper hand. It was so promising I was disappointed where they went after that. Agree with what everyone else here said about the resolution; how it felt rushed, and things left unexplained just seemed confusing or quick-script-fixes ("If a man dies in the simulation he dies in real life" Why would that be?)

Another thing no one's mentioned, I just took it for granted after seeing the first trailer that these characters were all cos-playing being in the 1950s. I think that worked creating the aura of strangeness in the beginning, because it wasn't just that they were in an isolated community doing something secret, they were also pretending it was a time period from before they were born. That created more of a mystery.

In the end, the movie this reminded me of most is The Village. A pretty good start, would have been saved by a different approach to the ending.

Dr. DVD

At one point I actually thought that maybe they were going to go in a different direction from the original script in terms of the twist . I was thinking it might turn out that they actually were in the 1950s, but the community was an experimental one created in an unknown part of United States by Pine and Chan. Pine would be a former Nazi (the blonde hair blue eyes look) and Chan a former Japanese spy or something. All of the husbands were creating a doomsday weapon to destroy the U.S. and were down on their luck individuals. The wives were under hypnosis or something like that. Lots to play with when you look at that scenario.

I was spoilerizing my scenario, but then realized it didn't happen, so it's not one.

Ash Ketchum

I'd see the movie if it had your plot. I'm reminded of a spy film from 1964 called 36 HOURS, starring James Garner, Eva Marie Saint and Rod Taylor, where the Nazis have captured American officer Garner, drugged him and taken him to what looks like a postwar rehab center for wounded vets in the U.S. where he wakes up in what they tell him is 1950 and that he's been in a coma for 6 years or so, all a bid to slowly pry some secret from him about some impending invasion (probably D-Day).

bunkaroo

So if the wives are jacked in the whole time, how are they eating IRL? What about going to the toilet?

feenst

stingermck

Man I love pitch meeting and they destroyed this.