Reviews

From the first episode, I thought this was going to be an absolute belter, the kind you can plan your lockdown evening around. 2nd episode good, 3rd episode good. Then a bit eh, then maybe, then the last episode... God save me.

It went from intelligent and well crafted to really unintelligent. To the point where we had 2 police officers arguing with a man in a suicide vest about being 'lied to' and getting him all upset when seriously, the man's wearing a bomb and we can talk about this later. I'm not a realism nerd because I have no idea what realism is in this arena, but I know you don't moan and grizzle at an apparent suicide bomber when the bomb squad are minutes away. Then towards the end, we had previously nuanced characters revealing their evil ways in monologues that only lacked the phrase "muahahahaha".

And just to add - this features just about the least likeable protagonist since Harry Potter. Yes he has PTSD, but is also irritating and nowhere near as intimidating as he's made out to be. He's an angsty little twerp, and we all breathed a sigh of relief when he appeared to die mid-way through. Alas, 'twas a ruse. He lived, and we died a little inside.

Still pretty good for the first half though!

OK, I want the 1hr 30 spent in space with the most unconvincing, stereotypical group of astronauts ever to string out really boring dialogue.

The bit on earth was really good! George Clooney was captivating, and his relationship with the little girl Iris (who may or may not be in his imagination as a distant memory of his daughter) was fascinating. Honestly I could have spent 2 hours watching them and found it calming, touching and sad.

But crap the stuff in the space ship was dull. Felicity Jones puts in just about the least inspiring 90 minutes in film history, and it was so long and boring. I love backstory, I love extended dialogue and plot. I fell asleep during half of this. It's like the film was written for a 1hr slot, but Netflix decided it needed to be stretched to 2. Honestly the irrelevant, slow rambling was painful.

On top of that were the excruciatingly predictable "we're on a space voyage" tropes. Everything going well? Have an asteroid field, kablam. Calculating damage:*critical*! Comms are down! We'd better take a space walk to fix it - that always goes well. Let's take the newbie too, what could go wrong? Something! Oh no! She dead. Sad.

Except nobody cared. See, I just wrote the whole damn plot in 30 seconds.

Another thing I need to add - the way the space walk scene was prolonged with music was excruciating. It's the kind of thing Q Tarantino does - you know, take a mundane scene, put quirky music in it with quirky actors and quirky dancing and it strangely captivates you for a few minutes. This made me want to eat my own head to escape the screaming need to cringe. It was so obviously an attempt at lengthening the movie by 3 minutes because they were running short.

Anyway, I liked the George Clooney bit.

It took me a few episodes to get into it, and then I REALLY got into it. Then it ran on for 2 episodes too many and fizzled into nothing.

And they just would not stop dramatically monologuing through it all. My favourite character was the father, because he was the only one who actually tried to explain things like a normal person, but was constantly interrupted by another character starting a 5-minute monologue in protest of some minor detail, and cut off the damn explanation.

Apart from the father, the junkie son and the childhood versions, every single character was dislikeable. A bunch of self obsessed drama queens. Maybe that was by designed to show what the house did to them as people, but who do I root for? Who do I want a good ending for? I wanted 3 of them dead.

Honestly, this should have ended 2 episodes earlier with a more obvious Hollywood ending of the house going nuts and destroying some of them along with itself in a spooky cataclysm.

Pixar, you are great at creating visuals and touching emotions. Almost beyond compare, even. But please, please please please stop using the same predictable twists and turns over and over in every single film... Pleeeease!

In the last few days in isolation I've watched Coco, Finding Dory, The Incredibles 2, Dumbo and Wall-E. And it reached the point where I knew exactly what was going to happen in Coco 20 minutes before it happened - literally, every time. It's so frustrating because they are beautiful films, and the 1st half of each is so captivating, and I know the 2nd half of each is for children. But it's such a shame that I want to switch off as soon as the "action" starts. Because you know the ending by then, you know there are going to be 3 false endings "yay he found his dad!" - "oh no wait his dad's evil but yay his family found him!" - "oh no wait they need the picture he had 5 minutes ago" - "yay he's got the picture and the blessing but ahhhh no it got snatched away"... Come on, it's punishing. Please just end a film where it should end.