Change Your Image
jselberg-1
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Reviews
The Night House (2020)
Decently spooky, boring ending
I found it somewhat intriguing and creepy until the last act.
It should have not had the last act at all. We the viewers had every piece of information necessary to put the puzzle together ourselves, but they had to give the audience that moment of total resolution, which to me just results in boredom. If you have to have that kind of conventional ending, at least mix it up with a twist: she should have realized at the end that she too was just one of the 'decoys' (of course that would have required some other significant changes to the script as well). Either that or not explaining at all, would have been much better than what we got.
Down with the King (2021)
decent premise goes nowhere
Scenic shots of a rapper in rural landscape, he is a burnout who tries to take a break from his successful carreer as a gangster rapper in a remote house. In the beginning the main conflict is clearly set up: he is locked into the image he has created to keep making money, not only for himself but also his mother and daughter who depend on him. But he doesn't enjoy his work anymore.
One would expect a story of self discovery against 'fish out of water' farm work backdrop and dramatic story beats created by interactions with the small town folk and his dependants/manager pressuring him to go back to his routine. This is attempted but doesn't really work out as they didn't have any ideas for what the character could be discovering about himself, his journey turns out to be an empty failure with no insight gained or real dramatic highs and lows, all conflicts are superficial and quickly reconciled. If i understand the ending correctly, after a failed concert he quits the rap game for good and now lives in the remote house permanently. How that financially affects his family is left open.
During the whole movie the main character very rarely shares his thoughts or feelings with anyone, his conflict is kept mostly internal. This is truly puzzling, rap movies have such a great, easy, obvious way of expressing emotional states and vibes through the music, particularly the 'writing scene'. In all 'writing scenes' the character just comes up with the same old gangster rap stuff that he wanted to get away from, completely unrelated to his current experiences. Maybe this was a deliberate choice. But in that case i think there should have been a bit more focus on a comedic tone. After all there is quite clear comedy in a guy rapping about drug dealing, killing, prison, etc, while doing farm work in serene landscapes. It is also quite true to life how it is much harder to develop as a person than just changing your circumstances.
All the technical aspects were decent, nice cinematography, good acting, but the script felt only about 20-30% done.