It's pretty good. Most of the time they make the suburbia seem at once fake and familiar, though occasionally it becomes completely real, loses its uncanny air, and I'm not sure if I like that. Doesn't help that the first half happens too fast - lots of busy images, because things need to be shown in the limited runtime, so it makes the setting feel a bit too regular, too populated, and it doesn't give the main character's off-putting interactions room or time to breathe, they just get caught up in the congestion, normal pieces of normal activity. He just appears to be wandering around in a setting that we are shown is normal, when we ourselves should be as thrown off as he is by the strangeness of it. The second half and all its angles and claustrophobic frames are very transparently trying to play up the psychological edge, the desperation, of it all, but I think it gives way to some cool and trippy things. The point of it all is driven home through a clumsy monologue, but the message is something I needed to hear at this point in my life, even if it is a platitude you could find on one of those crappy inspirational quote websites. If I revisited this my score wouldn't be as high, but I'm coming off a love affair with "Where Is Everybody?" so the images of strange and fake suburbia really fascinate me, and the payoff hits harder right now than it normally would.
Review by Kevin BeazleyBlockedParent2021-04-07T11:17:56Z
It's pretty good. Most of the time they make the suburbia seem at once fake and familiar, though occasionally it becomes completely real, loses its uncanny air, and I'm not sure if I like that. Doesn't help that the first half happens too fast - lots of busy images, because things need to be shown in the limited runtime, so it makes the setting feel a bit too regular, too populated, and it doesn't give the main character's off-putting interactions room or time to breathe, they just get caught up in the congestion, normal pieces of normal activity. He just appears to be wandering around in a setting that we are shown is normal, when we ourselves should be as thrown off as he is by the strangeness of it. The second half and all its angles and claustrophobic frames are very transparently trying to play up the psychological edge, the desperation, of it all, but I think it gives way to some cool and trippy things. The point of it all is driven home through a clumsy monologue, but the message is something I needed to hear at this point in my life, even if it is a platitude you could find on one of those crappy inspirational quote websites. If I revisited this my score wouldn't be as high, but I'm coming off a love affair with "Where Is Everybody?" so the images of strange and fake suburbia really fascinate me, and the payoff hits harder right now than it normally would.