my main reaction: no matter your opinion of the movie, read the book this was based on if you haven't yet. it was far more frightening (and gory! so gory!!!) and the storytelling decisions made were well-executed, if much more traumatic.
rest of my thoughts below:
this was acted well and looked beautiful. that's actually what's kind of annoying. like, i even liked dave bautista's performance, and his acting is hit-or-miss for me (and i think the rest of the world probably). everyone else was amazing too, and jonathan groff was especially reminiscent of the book eric.
and i get that movies can't always be faithful to the books they adapt. i think adaptations can coexist with their source material, too, regardless of how closely they stick to it. (the last of us is a good example; it generally replicates the original video game while still making major changes that make sense and play out authentically.)
i guess the issue for me is that the changes here took away what made the cabin at the end of the world the story that it was. paul tremblay wrote things in that book that i honestly never expected an author to write. he made decisions that are taboo in fiction and they worked. and to be fair, one of the coolest things in the book is how he changes the perspective near the end from third to first, to a bizarre amalgamation of both that actually worked. that's not something a movie can replicate, so i wasn't expecting that to be portrayed. but i was expecting the same terror the book gave, because the movie was marketed as a horror. i hadn't seen the trailer, but i had friends say it was scary. the movie wasn't. it just—was what it was. maybe it was kind of a thriller? kind of a drama? it didn't manage to give me the same fear response the book did, and i think that is at minimum something it should have achieved.
some of the changes were also just confusing. for example, it wasn't clear until one of the final scenes why on earth andrew's occupation needed to be changed to human rights attorney. and the ending. oh, the ending was disappointing. i understand why certain decisions weren't kept; it would've been a hard movie to stomach. but even so, man, i don't know why we couldn't have kept the open-ended part of the conclusion. i normally hate when stories do that (as someone with severe anxiety, that shit used to be rumination bait) but it worked for this story. god. so many things were confirmed that should've been left up to interpretation.
also: not nearly gory enough. i've read some reviews that the violence in this movie is intense—maybe it's just because i'm comparing it to tremblay's VERY vivid descriptions of gore, but this was tame. it cuts away from every act of violence and relies on sound alone to give you the knowledge that someone has been injured.
was it worth watching? sure, it was fine. but it's not worth a rewatch and it told a lesser version of the story the cabin at the end of the world told. if you hate reading, that probably boosts its value, but if you like reading, go read the book.
Review by hannahBlockedParent2023-02-22T10:51:36Z
my main reaction: no matter your opinion of the movie, read the book this was based on if you haven't yet. it was far more frightening (and gory! so gory!!!) and the storytelling decisions made were well-executed, if much more traumatic.
rest of my thoughts below:
this was acted well and looked beautiful. that's actually what's kind of annoying. like, i even liked dave bautista's performance, and his acting is hit-or-miss for me (and i think the rest of the world probably). everyone else was amazing too, and jonathan groff was especially reminiscent of the book eric.
and i get that movies can't always be faithful to the books they adapt. i think adaptations can coexist with their source material, too, regardless of how closely they stick to it. (the last of us is a good example; it generally replicates the original video game while still making major changes that make sense and play out authentically.)
i guess the issue for me is that the changes here took away what made the cabin at the end of the world the story that it was. paul tremblay wrote things in that book that i honestly never expected an author to write. he made decisions that are taboo in fiction and they worked. and to be fair, one of the coolest things in the book is how he changes the perspective near the end from third to first, to a bizarre amalgamation of both that actually worked. that's not something a movie can replicate, so i wasn't expecting that to be portrayed. but i was expecting the same terror the book gave, because the movie was marketed as a horror. i hadn't seen the trailer, but i had friends say it was scary. the movie wasn't. it just—was what it was. maybe it was kind of a thriller? kind of a drama? it didn't manage to give me the same fear response the book did, and i think that is at minimum something it should have achieved.
some of the changes were also just confusing. for example, it wasn't clear until one of the final scenes why on earth andrew's occupation needed to be changed to human rights attorney. and the ending. oh, the ending was disappointing. i understand why certain decisions weren't kept; it would've been a hard movie to stomach. but even so, man, i don't know why we couldn't have kept the open-ended part of the conclusion. i normally hate when stories do that (as someone with severe anxiety, that shit used to be rumination bait) but it worked for this story. god. so many things were confirmed that should've been left up to interpretation.
also: not nearly gory enough. i've read some reviews that the violence in this movie is intense—maybe it's just because i'm comparing it to tremblay's VERY vivid descriptions of gore, but this was tame. it cuts away from every act of violence and relies on sound alone to give you the knowledge that someone has been injured.
was it worth watching? sure, it was fine. but it's not worth a rewatch and it told a lesser version of the story the cabin at the end of the world told. if you hate reading, that probably boosts its value, but if you like reading, go read the book.