Mind you, I knew nothing whatsoever of the book, but it was a murder mystery thriller with a pretty swell cast, so I though yeah what the hell. I'm honestly not sure if the copy I was watching had scenes missing from it or what. Because I really don't think I've ever seen a movie that had so much scattered throughout it that seemingly had little to nothing to do with whatever was happening in the rest of the movie. Almost like it was portions from a completely different film accidentally got spliced into this.
My first true WTF reaction was Val Kilmer's first scene. Granted it took me a few seconds, and had to take a really close look that it WAS Val Kilmer, because I don't think I've ever seen him looking worse. Seriously it looked like he'd been suffering a severe long term illness but came back to moviemaking way too soon. And then, holy sweet lord, the sound. It quite simply, was NOT Val Kilmer. I suddenly though I was watching the MST3K version of a movie scene, but within the original movie itself. It was like someone who was both stoned out of his mind, AND had a bag of marbles in his mouth. like talk about a face & voice not remotely matching. And really all in all the Kilmer stuff, I think it was total 3 scenes he was in, and I honestly have no clue what it had to do with the rest of the movie. What happened in them (aside from one particular scene, something he's looking at on the ground for a handful of seconds) had no lasting affect in the movie that I could tell, and nothing ever about/from it's ever really referenced again.
In fact it felt like there were multiple little details that played very strangely in the moment they're there, then are never explained or referenced again. There's one scene where a victim is established there on screen, and the killer "surprises" them which of course leads to their murder, but the way the scene is staged, it is just absolutely absurd that the victim wouldn't have realized the killer just entered the room in which the victim already stands. Even though they're not looking directly at them, they're like 8-10 feet apart, there's no way between sound or sensation you don't realize someone else just came in.
And, I mean I won't even bother with the worrying about getting the spoiler tag usage right to not blatantly talk about who the killer is, frankly it seems almost totally pointless of who the actual killer is lol... oh but, one major element I do remember from what of the promotion I saw for the movie back prior to theatrical release was the highlighting of creepy little handwritten notes the killer has made for the police (I guess the Harry Hole detective character in particular), the weird way it says "Mister Police", and "I gave you all the clues", and all that stuff, that was not NEARLY as prevalent in the movie as I would've thought the marketing led us to think. In my mind, anyway. Yeah Harry gets the one note near the start that rather unnerves him, but god I can't even remember now if it was done at all the rest of the movie, if it was than once, at the most.
I'm sorry for what's probably rambling on forever now about this movie, but like I said, this was absolutely no ordinary bad movie. It actually even seems kind of unique to me in the level of and just HOW terrible it was lol.. like I don't think I've ever had this particular sort of reaction before, even movies that I like viscerally hated. And yet, Michael Fassbender! Rebecca Ferguson! JK Simmons! Val Kilmer! (well... "sort of") lol Thank you all for indulging me, if there's actually anyone still reading.
Submitted December 15, 2017 at 07:39AM by CaptCoulson http://ift.tt/2kxjxbc
