Two sets of bitterly divided half brothers convene upon their dying mother's house to discuss their potential inheritance. When the house is unexpectedly laid siege to by masked raiders, a spiral of violence leads to a shocking turn of events.
Mercy, put forward as a Netflix Original, is unfortunately a very dissatisfying film. The initial scenes, although sombre, are well set up with a moody resonance. However, that all falls apart when after the initial assault by the raiders, everything stops, rewinds and what's just happened has to be explained all the way through the middle third. All this ensures is that all tension is lost and the viewer is just simply watching the same scenes all over again, albeit at different angles. When the last third approached, I really lost interest in what was happening.
Things aren't rescued by the utterly implausible plot and the fact that when your central characters are so po-faced, miserable and sketchily drawn, how is the viewer meant to care about whether they escape their predicaments or not? The actors really don't have much to work with when their characters are so two dimensional.
It's a shame really, as there is some good work on show. The cinematography is decent (although literally too dark sometimes), the raiders' look is suitably threatening and the movie is compact and unpretentious. However, just when you're getting suitably tense, events halt and proceedings sag very heavily. The aforementioned plot is chiefly to blame, as the stop-start proceedings are mostly as a result of the film trying to explain the vague and frankly unbelievable events that unfold.
I'm not going to say that Mercy should or could have been so much better, as there is so much intrinsically wrong with it. Simply, Mercy is an attempt at a shocking chiller that will in the end just leave you cold.
Mercy, put forward as a Netflix Original, is unfortunately a very dissatisfying film. The initial scenes, although sombre, are well set up with a moody resonance. However, that all falls apart when after the initial assault by the raiders, everything stops, rewinds and what's just happened has to be explained all the way through the middle third. All this ensures is that all tension is lost and the viewer is just simply watching the same scenes all over again, albeit at different angles. When the last third approached, I really lost interest in what was happening.
Things aren't rescued by the utterly implausible plot and the fact that when your central characters are so po-faced, miserable and sketchily drawn, how is the viewer meant to care about whether they escape their predicaments or not? The actors really don't have much to work with when their characters are so two dimensional.
It's a shame really, as there is some good work on show. The cinematography is decent (although literally too dark sometimes), the raiders' look is suitably threatening and the movie is compact and unpretentious. However, just when you're getting suitably tense, events halt and proceedings sag very heavily. The aforementioned plot is chiefly to blame, as the stop-start proceedings are mostly as a result of the film trying to explain the vague and frankly unbelievable events that unfold.
I'm not going to say that Mercy should or could have been so much better, as there is so much intrinsically wrong with it. Simply, Mercy is an attempt at a shocking chiller that will in the end just leave you cold.
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