Category: 1 star

This was bad. Don’t watch it. The only good parts of this movie can all be found if you type “The Gorge Monsters” into Google Images. It turns out the movie I actually wanted to see started about an hour and five minutes until this two-hour movie, alas. Once we got there though, here’s what I liked:

• Skull spiders are great, lol.
• I love the tree-ness of these humans, and the human-ness of the trees. All very freaky and juicy
• I love when they found that lab in HQ or whatever, beautiful set pieces

The “reveal” that the hollow men are former soldiers didn’t feel like much of a reveal to me because that was what I assumed to be the case the minute JD said that 2400 soldiers never came back.

The dumb shit that annoyed me

• I super hated that dumb love story line
  • If you had to insist on a love story to bond these two characters (which again, I don’t think you need), there are so many super quick ways to establish emotional depth. I’ll show you:
    • Former lovers reunited with the one that got away
    • Current lovers who each think the other is on a different assignment
    • Long time frenemies
    • I’m a mercenary who sacrificed myself for the love of my life, oh wait that person is on the other side of the gorge
    • Job gone wrong and this is how my partner and I are paying off our debts
    • LITERALLY ANYTHING PLS THIS LOVE STORY IS SO PAINFUL. Except when it’s so fucking boring.
• I wanted Drasha to be different. I also wanted Levi to be different.
  • My dear Drasha, I can definitely understand being curious. But for the love of Christ and all that is holy WHAT exactly are you smitten by? Enlighten me. Am I just too gay to understand how she was wooed? I get that y’all are the only two people on Earth right now, functionally speaking, but wouldn’t you just want to fuck?
  • When he said his best kill shot was from however many meters, she should have bragged about her kill shot being like 63 more meters than his. And then he should’ve been the one to be like, “Oh shit, did you make that impossible kill shot in Yemen last year?” Levi should have been a simp!
  • Why is Levi taking the lead when these two are supposedly on equal footing.
  • Between losing the auto ascender, FORGETTING HER FUCKING AMMO PACK, and literally going for said pack after it magically appeared as a gift, Drasa is a little too damsel-in-distress for me, and is by extension a waste of Anya Taylor Joy’s talents. Then she loses her knife. Girl you are an assassin, get it together! Oh my God and now she got got in the stupid web of human mutants.

The credits started rolling and I yelled “BOOOO” at my laptop. As a rule, I do not give movies 0 stars because making things is hard and takes a lot of work, even that bad stuff. And really, the people who made the monster costumes and the set pieces did a glorious job. But it’s not enough, my apologies to them. 1 fucking star.

The trailer made this look like it was going to be both very funny and very silly. It’s a Strong Baby production (Jonah Hill’s company), so I was on board for slapstick and stupidity. Let’s fucking go. Well, the overwhelming majority of funny shit happens in the first thirty minutes of the movie. The rest of it is more of a coming-of-age tale for Rachel Zegler and the white boy whose face is so square he looks like he could be the teen version of the old guy from “Up.” Pause: I’m being told this actor’s name is Jaeden Martell.

My primary beef with the movie is that it is very silly, BUT then they start killing characters in which you’re already emotionally invested in silly ways and it feels like a mismatch. Killing a bystander with CDs to the head? Hilarious. Killing one of the main characters after watching them deepen an emotional arc with one of the mains? Actually just kinda sad. And I don’t mind being sad at a major character death, I was just expecting all of this to be funny. So it felt incongruent. Overall, I think 2 stars.

EDIT: I wrote the majority of this review before I got to the third act. That whole Fred Durst “Faith” cover to rally morale was the coup de grace for me. Painfully corny. I couldn’t do it. This review is edited down to 1.5 stars.

I checked the runtime an hour into this movie. You get to watch the antagonist dial his creepy meter all the way up while the hero gets dumber and more spineless up until the very end. My qualms:

Who does that? The annoying parts of this movie make me appreciate Nope all the more because why don’t you have a “fuck this” gene embedded into your DNA? Even if you’re dissatisfied with your life and full of ennui, as with Bjorn, why would you want to stay in someone’s house when you know they enjoy watching you and your wife fuck? Especially when it’s clearly the first time you’ve gotten laid in like years. And after everything Louise tells you, how are you still talked into staying? Idiot.

You call that a twist? Listen, the twist is exactly what you think it is: these freaks have done this shit before. A lot. Because of that, when Bjorn finds Abel in the pool, it’s a little startling, but not all that surprising. Same with kidnapping Agnes and cutting out her tongue. From there, killing Bjorn and Louise is the next logical step. How Karina and Patrick killed Louise and Bjorn was a surprise, but that was kind of it.

What we never get is the why. Why do all of this? How does Muhajid fit into your scheme and why is he on board? What exactly is the turnaround time on your whole kidnapping kids, killing their parents, and then killing them routine? I thought this would turn into some Ari Aster shit where maybe we’re worshiping an ancient god à la Hereditary or maybe we just have ancient fucked up traditions as seen in Midsommar. It’s neither. So I guess this is just Karina and Patrick’s kink? Well if that’s the case, I’d love to know how the hell they got this party started to begin with.

Verdict: For some movies, a remake is their only chance at redemption. I’m almost mad I wasted my time watching this. I would give this 0 stars if the actors hadn’t done such a fantastic job carrying this steaming pile of hot garbage on their backs. I hope they all have chiropractors. 1 star.