An average movie

To be honest, I wasn’t really sure what to expect from this movie but, since it was directed by Scott Cooper and since it was available on Disney+, I thought I might as well check it out. Well, I’m afraid it turned out to be Cooper’s most disappointing movie so far after all. I do think it definitely had some potential but, unfortunately, this movie never managed to grab me. It’s difficult to exactly point out what went wrong here. Indeed, the dark and bleak mood was actually pretty good and there was something intriguing about this mythological Indian creature. I did like the fact that they didn’t explain much about this legend, this way, it remained pretty mysterious. However, it was rather weird that even though it was based on an Algonquian legend (which was an Indian tribe located in the Northeast, mostly in Canada), this movie was actually taking place in Oregon which is like at the complete side of the USA. However, a bigger issue was the characters were so poorly fleshed out, especially this sister and brother. It was actually quite incredible how much Jesse Plemons managed to do with such a half-baked character. I mean, everything he said or did was actually pretty boring or not interesting at all but Plemons was still completely convincing, even while the wildest things were going on. I wish I could say the same about Keri Russell. Sure, she is still really lovely but I think she is actually a rather boring actress (I have to admit that I have never seen any of her TV-shows like ‘The Diplomat’, ‘The Americans’ or ‘Felicity’). Here, the best she could do was looking constipated through the whole duration. On the other hand, they were both not really helped by how poorly developed their characters were. I mean, they started to talk about the various tragedies that took place in their family but, then, this aspect was completely gone after a while. Seriously, it was never explained why Julia actually came back to live with her brother. This aspect should have been completely dropped or properly developed. It was like the drug pandemic going on in the region, it was not a bad idea either but it was not developed at all. Anyway, my rating might be harsh here but I just didn’t connect with this movie at all. 

5/10