This week I was stuck with Black Snake Moan (2007) for the final movie of March’s draft. I knew only two things going into this movie, the first that it was Justin Timberlake’s first feature film he ever starred in (which is a stretch to say as I’m pretty sure he had a total screen time of around seven minutes in this movie,) and the second being that this meme of Samuel L. Jackson was from it.

I wish those were the only two things I still knew of this movie. To say I’m disappointed would be underselling it. I kept thinking about how this movie was trying so hard to be this deep, meaningful think-piece the entire time I was watching it, and how the execution of every aspect of it just fell entirely flat on its face.

The movie stars Samuel L. Jackson as Lazarus, an aging farmer whose wife has recently left him, Christina Ricci as Rae, a young, abused, and sex addicted girl whose boyfriend has just left for the military, and Justin Timberlake (again, “stars” is used extremely lightly here) as Ronnie, who has just left to join the military. Rae begins partying and sleeping around the night Ronnie leaves town, this leads to her getting beaten by Ronnie’s former friend and left for dead on the side of the road. This is when Lazarus finds her, and attempts to save her.

There are many religious overtones in this movie that even to me, someone who was raised in a Lutheran Church and is fairly knowledgeable on the bible, just didn’t quite understand the meaning of or the reasoning behind. It felt as if the person who wrote these lines of dialogue only tangentially knew of the bible. 

Rae is delirious when she crosses paths with Lazarus and is trying to escape back to a life of partying and sex addiction, so his response is to chain her to the radiator in his house. This was insanely poorly executed, and just felt even more abusive to her character. 

I will say the one thing they did sort of well was explaining Rae’s past abuse, and how it shaped her character. I don’t want to knock this part of the movie. I am a man who has no idea what any woman who has been abused by a step parent has been through, I can only relate so much to this aspect of her character, and I thought it was done pretty well, especially for such an overall awfully executed movie. 

At one point, Rae is able to confront her mom about the abuse, because somehow Lazarus’ weird attempt at healing her by chaining her to the radiator and taking care of her in his way actually works. This was probably the best scene in the entire movie, Rae beats her mom’s face in with a broom handle while screaming “WHY DID YOU LET HIM DO THAT TO ME”

The rest of the movie was honestly a slog to get through. There’s some sub plot with a Preacher (John Cothran) that Lazarus is friends with, and he helps here and there, but he’s kind of just a character that exists to exist, and didn’t really do much else until the very end.

After only a week away at basic, Ronnie turns up back home, which is left entirely unexplained to the viewer, and in my experience, that’s not how the military works. But sure, just make it work for your movie’s bad plot I guess.

Everything about this movie was questionable, made me upset, and didn’t make much sense plot wise, leaving me entirely unsatisfied. And this was how I felt before it got to the very abrupt ending, where Ronnie shows up with a gun at Lazarus’ then the Preacher shows up and they all sit and talk, then immediately in the next scene Ronnie and Rae are getting married. As they drive away from the wedding, Ronnie has an anxiety attack and Rae sings to him to calm him down. Then the credits roll. 

Why do people write these seemingly grandiose and deep movies, only to have them fall flat, and leave you with a sudden cut to credits that leaves you with more questions than answers? I would say that this is one of the worst, if not the worst example I can come up with of this in a movie. I was already annoyed at the weird pacing, strange characterization, and quick plot (which didn’t feel quick for a two hour run time) only to be slapped in the face with a cut to credits that left me somehow wanting more and less at the same time.

Zero explanation for almost every plot they set up in this movie, but we’re force fed a “happy ending” that feels anything but. 

While googling for some pictures to use in this review, I found this movie poster, that just sets the tone for how bad this movie misses the mark. “Everything is HOTTER down south” is an offensively horrible tagline for a movie about a young woman’s abuse and “healing journey”, which I put in quotes, because again, how is being chained to a radiator by a man you don’t know a healthy way to heal? I don’t know, and I don’t wish to know.

This movie did nothing for me other than make me genuinely upset that I had to sit through it. I was talking with my girlfriend at dinner after we watched it about how I understood what the movie was trying to do, but how it failed at every turn. If I gave you a slice of the worst pizza you can imagine, cardboard crust, unseasoned, water sauce, cheap flavorless cheese, and told you that it was doing its best trying to be a pizza, would you give it extra points for it? I was waffling between a 1.5 and a 2 on this one, because again, I understood what it was going for. But it just missed at every single opportunity.

-1.5 mallards/5

-Seann

Open Water 2: Adrift (2006) is the presumed sequel to Open Water (2003), which to the point of my writing this I have not seen. Luckily, to my understanding, the two are not connected via plot or anything, but are merely made by the same producers and director. This is true of Open Water 3: Cage Dive (2017) as well. Strange naming conventions aside, Open Water 2: Adrift (2006) was not something I had seen before this week, which is probably unsurprising for those who know me (or have read any of my reviews before). This movie is actually an interesting one to critique, because it is truly remarkable in some ways, and absolutely unremarkable in others. I had planned to write something about the tagline (Fatigue. Hypothermia. Death.) applying to the characters of this movie and also the viewer, but I feel that would be a bit unfair. I am, after all, still alive. 

As usual (or what I always seem to do for some reason) I’ll mention that bad parts first. Unfortunately, the bad parts are the majority of the movie. The plot of this film can be summed up in a single sentence: they jump off the boat and can’t get back on. That’s it. That’s the entire plot. There’s no sharks, nobody is chasing them, there’s not a mermaid harassing them or nothing. There is a baby on board the boat, but this becomes such an inconsequential and to me meaningless plot point that it’s barely worth mentioning. Nonetheless the runtime of 94 minutes is…not unbearable. Not what you thought I was going to type, eh? Wait until I get to the positives. What is unbearable through most of the movie is the cinematography, acting, strange flashback sequences, poor dialogue, unfortunate sound choices, and character development. 

I’m usually not one to point out plot holes in a movie or book – as a writer myself it feels bad to do a gotcha on another creator, as people online tend to love to do (why didn’t they just take the eagles to Mordor?). That being said, the plot holes in this movie were difficult to overlook, because they were clearly caused by the studio trying to pad out the runtime. The scenes with the plot holes further the overall plot in such a small way and contribute very little to character development (which is essentially all this movie is). I’ll mention the plot holes here for anyone who decides to watch this movie and wants to know what I’m referencing, so spoilers start here: when they tie their clothes together and manage to hook them on the boat and use it as a ladder, why do they decide to have the beefiest, muscliest guy climb the clothes rope? I understand he probably has the most upper body strength, but at the same time, he probably weighs almost twice as much as our main character (who is even wearing a life jacket). I feel like if the smallest girl had tried to climb the rope, with the men hoisting her out of the water, then their chances for success would have been much higher. Additionally, when the guy’s phone rings in his pants pocket, why are the pants suddenly hanging off of the boat…and why did he not try to grab them to use the phone before this? At this point they had already been floating for a long while, and we had multiple establishing shots of the boat sans (that means without) the pants being present. This scene should have either been cut or moved to much earlier in the movie. 

Some other gripes I had: none of the characters are likable, even the main character to whom we have the most interior access. She might even be the most unlikeable of them all. She’s a total stick in the mud (or the ocean, in this case), and cares only about one thing. The cinematography is quite poor- many shots are out of focus, there’s strange editing going on with the knife at many points, sometimes the action is obscured by the characters (such as when they’re making the rope and when the guy mentioned earlier throws his phone away). The flashback scenes the main character has are supposed to be….artistic, I guess, but they come across as way cheesy and go on for way too long. Another symptom, I believe, of the struggle to reach the 94 minute runtime. Finally, the dialogue is rather stock, which is not a very descriptive criticism, but it is true. There’s not really anything interesting said by the characters, and the interesting parts, the most interesting of which being the big reveal at the end, are delivered so melodramatically as to be rendered entirely un-impactful. Really, most things about this movie are bad.

There are two things about this movie that are good. The set/environment, and the budget to earnings ratio. This movie takes place nearly entirely in the ocean. The boat is basically the only prop, other than a dolphin floaty (which is quickly dispatched) and a knife, which does play a crucial role. I would say the ocean is in fact the most important character, plot point, and prop in the movie. You would think making a 90 minute movie about people floating around would be boring, but it’s really not. That’s not thanks to the script, the acting, or any action – it’s primarily thanks to the environment itself, and the effect it has on the characters. Each of the characters goes through their own moment of weakness (some more so than others…), but these are mostly cursory and ultimately unimportant. 

I’ll touch for a moment on the financial aspects of the movie. The movie cost a whopping $1.2million – truly a shockingly low amount. It made just over $6million at the box office, which is not a massive number, but relative to the cost, it’s huge. I feel like a large portion of the budget was spent on travel and the boat itself. They made enough money between this one and first one to make a third one, which was an absolute catastrophe and failed to make even $1million at the box office. Similar to box office earnings, the ratings for these films diminish as we go along. Open Water has a slightly higher score than Open Water 2, and Open Water 3 has a significantly lower rating than Open Water 2. 

Final thoughts: this is not a good movie, but it is an interesting movie, if you are someone able to distinguish between the two. This movie is getting a low-ish score from me, and the main reason for that is that this is a poorly made movie. On a technical level, there are many issues with it. On an artistic level, there’s not really much to note. The good parts about this movie are the parts that, if changed, would make this a fundamentally different movie. Wrap your head around that one. In some ways this is the antithesis of the movie I reviewed the second week of this month, Dick Tracy (1990). That movie was well-made, but not interesting, whereas this one is poorly made but interesting. That’s why they’re getting the same score. If I had to recommend one over the other, it would be Dick Tracy (1990), because Al Pacino does truly perform quite well in it. 

Open Water 2: Adrift (2006) has an IMDB rating of 5.2 out of 10, a 2.3 out of 5 on Letterboxd, and a Rotten Tomatoes tomatometer score of 40%. I think these ratings are kind of in line with my own thoughts. As usual, the IMDB score is slightly higher than the others. I wouldn’t tell someone not to watch this movie if it sounded cool to them, but I also would never recommend it to someone out of the blue (pun very much intended).

2 mallards/5

-Maxwell