For the second week of June, I drafted a movie I had never heard of, despite there being plenty of (probably) more interesting picks left, but sometimes I like to force myself to watch something that I normally wouldn’t. In the past (maybe not for this blog) I have been surprised, and ended up having an enjoyable evening by using this method of choosing what to spend my evening watching. For Ratter (2015), this was far from the case. This movie had me thinking back to a movie I watched in May that I despised, Captivity (2007), and not in a fond way. My entire review for that one, if you remember, was just: “Pointlessly grotesque.” I know I can’t do a rug pull and write such an eloquently short review for a second movie only a month later, but I so badly want to write “Pointlessly boring.” and call it a day for this one.

I usually try to find the good in things, I want the things that people make as “art” to be interesting, or enjoyable. I know that real people worked on this, starred in it, edited it, and wanted it to be received well. But I just cannot find anything interesting to say about this movie. The way it was shot, the acting, the story (or lack there of) was unappealing in all the worst ways.

The movie follows Emma (Ashley Benson), who is a new grad student in New York, living on her own for the first time. Someone, a “Ratter” as it were, has hacked her laptop and phone and is stalking her every move. The issue I have with this is that she takes her laptop everywhere with her. The coffee shop, the bathroom, the shower, she sleeps with it open on her bed, so the stalker always has an eye on her. I am someone who is addicted to my screens, and constantly have them with me. But when I shower or sleep, that’s a no screen-time time. Conveniently enough, because I’m sure the directors didn’t want to just make a weird stalker-porno movie, whenever she’s in the shower, her laptop is closed at a 45 degree angle so we can only see her from the knee down in the shower. 

One major thing that bothered me about the way this movie was filmed and edited is that since we are seeing it from the stalker’s point of view on her laptop webcam and cellphone camera, there were multiple multiple “glitches” and jumps of movement happening for Emma and her friends. I’m not sure why, because I don’t get motion sickness or anything from shaky cam films, or from first person point of view films, but the way this was edited was jarring and obnoxious and overdone. Not five minutes into the movie I had counted this happening into the double digits. I’m not sure why, but it annoyed me from the third time it happened. Thankfully as the movie progressed, it happened less often. But each time it did, I was still upset by it.

The entire movie can be summed up in less than three sentences. Emma is a college student living on her own, being cyber stalked by someone, who then finds out where she lives. About 100 minutes of nothing happens, then the stalker shows up at her apartment and kidnaps her while she’s on a Skype call with her mom. The end.

There were two or three times that the stalker was in her apartment or on her balcony while she was home. But of course, he can’t just kidnap her then, because then we’d only have a thirty minute short film instead of a feature length movie.

The most disappointing aspect of this already disappointing movie is that at the end, when the stalker finally gets Emma, there’s no big reveal. It’s just some guy. Which I guess was the point, it’s meant to feel like it can happen to anyone, anywhere, for any reason. But it comes across as another piece of the puzzle that doesn’t fit quite right. 

Ultimately, this movie lacked direction, lacked a compelling story, lacked an interesting cast of characters. It was just lacking in every regard that makes a movie watchable. At a tight runtime of only 121 minutes, I felt like this dragged on and on. When it was over, I rejoiced. Unlike my previous reviews of bad movies where I realize I’m liking them less and less as I write my review for them the following day, I disliked this one the correct amount from the start.

I wouldn’t recommend this movie to anyone. For a “found footage” movie, it misses the mark. For a “horror” movie, it misses the mark. For anything of interest or substance, you guessed it, it misses the mark. The only thing that’s good here is the premise for the story, but sadly, the execution is so poorly handled that it falls flat on its face. 

-0.5 mallards/5

-Seann

For the second week in a row, I’ve been tasked with watching a film that is a fictionalized version of a real person’s life. The same qualifications of last week’s film apply this week – this movie sits in an odd ground between fiction and documentary. I’m sure some of the details of what actually happened and the events depicted in the movie are not accurate, and therefore I don’t think films in this style are fair representations of the subject (or in this case subjects, since the movie is just as much about other historical figures as it is the eponymous Mary). I’ll be approaching this, like last week, mostly as a movie first and not focus as much on the biographical aspects of the movie.

Mary Shelley (2017) is a movie that, unsurprisingly, portrays the late teens of Mary Godwin. Perhaps I’m overestimating but I think the average person knows at least a small part about her life before watching this movie, or at least knows of her authorship of Frankenstein, if not her connections to Lord Byron. I think this is a great story to capture on the big screen, as it is a rather ripe historical moment and very dramatic. Is it as dramatic as the movie makes it out to be? Well, likely not. Again, I wasn’t there, but the movie smacks of melodrama from the opening moments, and does not let up for the entire two hour runtime (which feels more like four hours).

Undeniably the best aspect of this movie is the production, meaning quite literally how it was produced. The cinematography is great and, at times, even borders on excellent. Some of the finest and most entertaining moments of the movie are when the characters are scarce and the viewer is left to breathe in the atmosphere of woods, cemeteries, and sprawling British country estates. And then someone talks and it all comes crashing down. In addition to the scenery and locations, the wardrobes and set design are also a point of excellence. The film does a great job of portraying Mary’s poverty and yearning for a different world when she lives with her father, and when she is living in luxury (thanks to the ‘kindness’ of Percy or Byron), we see her discomfort and struggle with her own identity and wishes and desires. I think the film does a better job of portraying her interiority via the mise-en-scene than it does through the script and action.

There is a noticeable difference in quality between the acts of this film. The first act is a great example of a slog. We all know what’s going to happen, it’s just a matter of when and how the pieces fall in to place. Apparently they decided that the pieces should fall very boringly and uninspiredly. The first act does what it needs to – it introduces us to Mary’s life under her father’s thumb, she scribbles stories in secret, and they’re ghost stories, so she’s not like the other girls. Mary visits Scotland, which is an example of the great cinematography I described earlier, and this is also where Maisie Williams (of Game of Thrones fame) makes her disastrous appearance. It’s unclear whether the script let her down in this instance (absolutely believable) or whether her acting was just robotic and plastic (also believable), but she really puts the exclamation point on what was already a poorly done section. A shame, since normally I like her performances.

Speaking of acting, the ensemble of this film really tried their best to salvage what I can only surmise was an abysmal and inconsistent script. Elle Fanning navigates the overblown emotions she’s asked to portray very well, and does her best to reel in the sappy melodramatic vibes of the climactic scenes. Douglas Booth performs very well, and it also helps that he’s rakishly handsome and charismatic. I think the true star of the film is Bel Powley, who plays Mary’s sister (half-sister or step-sister?). She is a character that we as the viewer love to hate. While I wouldn’t go so far as to call her a villain, she’s an easy character to despise, and Powley’s brooding portrayal of her underscores our disdain.

The second and third acts are much improved, although paradoxically it ends too quickly. The beginning is too slow and the ending is too rushed, or it might be that I’m just more interested in the book itself than the life of the person behind it (though the two are rather inseparable). A two-hour runtime is fine, but this film would have been improved greatly by trimming at the front end and some lengthening at the back end, specifically when it comes to elaborating on the legacy of the book itself. Overall I think this movie is about ten minutes too long, and doesn’t even begin to be about Frankenstein or the Modern Prometheus until much too late.

While screening this, I was prepared to give it a 2 based on the first act alone, but as it went on it got better. I was watching the runtime, hoping that it would hurry up, but by the end I was wondering how much they could reasonably fit in with about ten minutes left. As it turns out, not much, and the overall quality of the movie suffers for it. Mary Shelley (2017) has a score of 6.4 out of 10 on IMDB, a Rotten Tomatoes tomatometer score of 40% (ouch!), and a Letterboxd score of 3.2 out of 10. This is the first time I’ve seen thus far that the Letterboxd and IMDB scores are not only identical, but significantly higher than the Rotten Tomatoes score. I’m not sure why that is – maybe this isn’t a movie to watch on a date night or while you’re hanging out with the boys. But it’s not exactly an artistic high-brow film you need to watch with a notepad and pencil in hand either. Regardless, my score for this is right in line with the Letterboxd and IMDB crowd. Good-ish movie with some serious and considerable flaws, but not a waste of time. I’ll likely never think about this one again, and it’ll be lost in darkness and distance.

-3 mallards/5

-Maxwell