I don’t mind diving into the world of independent film. As a member of film independent, and as someone who sat through many a student film in college, I know there is a wide range of film out there, and we really only glimpse the lucky few to be prominently featured. Here comes The Arrival, which lacks recognizable talent, a major distributor, and some typical basic filmmaking expectations. budget does not hold a film back. Movies like Paranormal Activity and Skinamarink were made on shoe string budgets with unknown cast, and proved to be creatively sufficient in their own right.
So, what does the Arrival bring to the space? Well, not audio description. I did, like I always do, request audio description if it was available, but my continued experience seems to be that some in the industry aren’t really sure what this is, or if a film has it. It isn’t closed captioning, and I think reps keep mistaking it for that. Though, I would be surprised if this did have audio description.
A small group of adults share what can best be described as a restaurant/bar/lounge space, while one of the young women tries to answer some very concerning questions about things she can’t remember. That’s the spoiler free, cut to the chase version. tonally, when the movie started, based on the primary theme, I thought we might be having a film that was like The Menu meets Promising Young Woman, but it never really rose to that occasion. What the Arrival seems to dare to do, is to be a subversively lighter take on darker fare, which ends up being the reason I didn’t quite follow the artistic vision.
I could talk about some of the other little things, like not being a fan of all the performances. When you deal with unknown actors, not everyone is ready for their big screen debut, and a few felt like college film performances. the sound was incredibly echoey, which I’ve seen low budget films that have managed to dodge this. I suppose the counter argument would be that the space might be cavernous and the lack of audio description just isn’t there to let me know that the echo feeling intentionally supports the space they are in. I’m going to guess it was more of a budget thing. there was a moment where the sound spliced in some ambient cityscape sounds, and it sounded just like someone held a microphone outside and captured “city life”. The score wasn’t really original enough to be memorable, but it also did support this tonal idea that we were approaching this tone differently than something like Blink Twice, Hard candy, or the aforementioned Promising Young Woman.
However, I do remember when the latter of that trio released, and the tone of that film rubbed people the wrong way, because even though it has a deeply disturbing pulse throughout, it wasn’t deemed serious enough by some. It didn’t stop its Oscar nominations, or Carey Mulligan’s brilliant performance. But, it was a minor gripe. I loved Promising Young Woman, but I do find that the characters in The Arrival are almost too cool and calm about everything. Having had friends who have been in very similar situations, they were nowhere near this relaxed, and able to have such calm conversations.
I don’t typically grade movies that lack audio description, as a blind film critic, it isn’t fair. For studio releases, i usually throw “unwatchable”, because I know they can afford audio description. Here, this indie gets a pass on that presumed harshness, because I’m not sure if the filmmaker is even aware what that is. I put less on filmmakers and more on festivals to require accessibility for all. If festivals made it commonplace, and if the AMPAS and other related groups made accessibility a requirement, it would become an industry standard. Then, we could talk more about the intricate details. As it is though, I’m less bothered by the trappings of this being low budget, and more just that the given choice to tone this in a lighter way just doesn’t work for me. it wouldn’t work for me if this had a 1K budget, or a 1 million budget. I think I needed this to have an urgency behind this that it is missing.
For my blind readers, I can’t recommend this without knowing it has audio description. While there is a lot of dialogue, i know nothing about what these characters look like, or even the space they occupy for the majority of the film. Anytime they aren’t talking, it is barely scored, so it isn’t even really pretty to listen to. For my sighted readers, if this lands on Tubi, I think there’s something to be said at least on a base level that we should continue to have conversations like this, and that films like this matter, even if they aren’t landing with quite the punch we might expect. what makes this worth watching is that anyone is bothering to tell the story at all, and I can at least respect that.
No grade Given.