I loved this movie right up until the ending...or should I say... the NON-ENDING!

Ugh.

Come on, y'all! Learn how to stick the fucking landing!!!
But, no. A complete wipeout.

It's crazy. Because I really dug this film. I loved the weirdness of it. The psychedelic nature of the pace and story. The two main characters were doing some really good acting. Both Justice Smith and Brigette Lundy-Paine were really strong here. And the writer/director Jane Schoenbrun showed some great directorial chops for most of the film. Her writing was really solid, up until the very end.

I just really loved it all.

...and then the wheels fell off of everything.

The writer part of Schoenbrun just ran out of ideas and the director part of Schoenbrun didn't know how to fix things at the end because she had completely failed to give us an ending to a very interesting story.

So very disappointing.

Plus her choices of casting Smith's character Owen with two actors and Lundy-Paine's character Maddy with just one actor was ridiculous, and showed some of Schoenbrun's immaturity as a filmmaker.

So there are time jumps. There is a "Young Owen", played by a young actor and then he goes from a 7th grader to a 9th grader and is played by Smith who looks nothing like the younger actor and he completely changes the character physically. Lundy-Paine stays the same, other than makeup and style choices. Then there's an 8(?)-year time jump and Smith stays in the role as twenties Owen, which is appropriate for Smith's actual age. Then later there's a 20-year leap and Smith is STILL in the role and in some ABSOLUTELY TERRIBLE MAKEUP that is really unacceptable in an A24 film that Emma Stone is producing.

Why didn't they get a 40-year old actor to play Old Owen?!?

Such a bad move. Took me out of the end of the movie.

But I was holding on hoping that things would resolve in some way. But unfortunately, Schoenbrun had no idea for ending her story and it just sucked. What a fucking terrible non-ending cop-out. Almost ruined this entire movie for me.

Hell, if she could have come through with a solid ending this could have been a 4-star or 4.5-star film for me... EASY.

But alas... I rated it as 3-star "good", just above a 2.5-star "okay".

Hopefully, Schoenbrun can follow through with her promise that she showed through 3/4 of this movie and come up with an ending next time. I think she has a lot of potential as a good horror director. I'll be watching out for what she does next.

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Hoop #51 (Bonus Kill #01) of CINEMONSTER's Hooptober 11: The Return To Texas Because We Need That Extra Push Over The Cliff

My Really Odd List and Complete Set of Reviews can be found here: Slappy McGee's Hoop-Tober 11.0 List.

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