Director: Babak Anvari
Writer: Babak Anvari (Screenplay)
Starring: Armie Hammer, Dakota Johnson, Zazie Beetz, Karl Glusman, Christin Rankins, Brad William Henke
Plot: Disturbing and mysterious things begin to happen to a bartender in New Orleans after he picks up a phone left behind at his bar.
Tagline – Don’t call it in.
Runtime: 1 Hour 35 Minutes
There may be spoilers in the rest of the review
Verdict: Wait What?
Story: Wounds starts like most nights in Rosie’s bar, bartender Will (Hammer) has the locals including Alicia (Beetz) her boyfriend Jeffrey (Glusman) and rig worker Eric (Henke) who isn’t afraid to get a little bit rough at times, when a fight gets out of hand, the college students there, left leaving a phone behind, which Will tries to let them know about, only to get a strange string of messages.
What Will discovers on the phone will leave him shocked and needing to find the truth about what he finds on the phone, with his partner Carrie (Johnson) not trusting a single thing he is doing.
Thoughts on Wounds
Characters – Will is a bartender who is generally quite relaxed about what happens in the bar, he knows tricks which will keep people happy, he tries to give himself the cool persona in the bar, outside the bar he is cheating on his girlfriend, which has made his relationship toxic. Will discovers a phone left behind at the bar, which sees him dive into the rabbit hole trying to learn about what the message being sent is really about, which soon sees him start to lose his mind with what he is seeing. Carrie is the girlfriend of Will’s, she is studying at the moment and doesn’t trust Will’s behavior even before the phone appears. Alicia is one of the locals in the bar, she does have a thing with Will on the side, which does make it difficult when she is around with her boyfriend. Jeffrey is the new boyfriend of Alicia’s that does have a similar path as Will, when it comes to the education side of things, trying to be a tougher man than he is.
Performances – Armie Hammer is the strongest of the performers in this film, he does handle the calmer sides with ease, only when it comes to losing his mind, it seems safe over stronger, Dakota Johnson and Zazie Beetz both feel mostly wasted in their roles where they do the best they can without getting much out of their characters. Most of the rest of the cast struggle to get much more out of their characters.
Story – The story here follows a bartender that finds a phone left behind at the bar which sees him starting to get strange message and experiencing unusually events, which sees his life spiralling out of control. This does start strongly because seeing the cool bartender that finds a horror video on the phone adds plenty of mystery to what is going on. The problems with the story comes from how it ends, because I don’t think it really ended in anyway, we do get to see a couple of looks at serious issues in life, but we don’t follow through with them on a strong enough level. This story will end up leaving you feel flat without anything seeming to finish.
Horror/Mystery – The horror does have a lot of dread through the film, but it just doesn’t get to the levels where it follows through, with the mystery being interesting to see, only never feeling like it got solved.
Settings – The film uses the New Orleans backdrop which is one of best horror locations, only it doesn’t seems to use this to the full levels.
Special Effects – The effects used are mostly to bring the number of bugs to the scenes, which don’t always look that good to see in the film.
Scene of the Movie – The video clip does give us a shock.
That Moment That Annoyed Me – It is really hard to read the text messages.
Final Thoughts – This is a horror that seems to miss the vital part of the film, the conclusion which just seems to just end without wrapping anything up, despite giving us an interesting mystery to start with.
Overall: Falls Flat.
