Who Suggested I Watch This?

Starring: Huge Jacked Man and Jake Gylenhoolahee
Written by: Aaron Guzikowski
Directed by: Denis Villeneuve

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You know, when I originally started doing Demise of Film, I said that I had two friends that I trust their opinion on movies. However, as time has passed, I've slowly decided not to trust anyone's opinion on movies any more.

One of those friends recommended Train to Busan and What We Do in the Shadows, two movies that I absolutely despised.

The other told me that I was crazy for preferring Unfriended to Prisoners. It's simple, Unfriended is laughably bad. Prisoners was just bad.

I remember back in 2013 that I heard a lot of talk about Prisoners. However, at that time, I didn't have a way to watch it. My Netflix was on hold and I was busy making Through the Devil's Eyes. I figured I would get around to it eventually.

Then one day on Amazon Prime I was recommended Enemy, from the director of Prisoners. Aside from the jump scare of the giant fucking spider, I thought Enemy was a stupid movie. It was a lot of style over substance, which I always see as a director jerking himself off.

Friends still told me, "yeah, but Prisoners is really good." A few weekends ago, my daughter and I binged a whole bunch of movies and Prisoners was one of them. She got bored and left halfway through and I stayed and watched until the end. I can say that Prisoners was more of what I learned to expect from the director of the pretentious Enemy.

It's a film that's almost two and a half hours long and you feel every second of it. This is not a David Fincher film like Seven or Zodiac, this film is a depressing slog. If I wanted a depressing movie, I would just watch Dear Zachary again. The entire runtime I kept asking myself why people hate me enough to subjugate me to this.

Let me clarify, this film isn't depressing because of the subject matter. This film is depressing because I'm wasting time with these lingering Driver-esque shots. Long takes of people just mumbling dialogue at one another.

What do I ultimately remember about this movie? Hugh Jackman blowing a whistle in a hole.

What do I remember about Unfriended (a movie we watched that same weekend)? I remember the spoopy ghost popping out and going boo! I remember the fat guy putting his hand in a blender. I remember laughing my ass off with my daughter and having a fantastic time.

Unfriended was stupid but we had some laughs. Prisoners made me envy the deaf and blind.