Wednesday, February 16, 2022

Delayed Reaction: The Wretched

Premise: A teen becomes suspicious that a creature has taken over his neighbor.

 


I'm a little annoyed, based on a Wikipedia prompt that said The Wretched was the first movie since Avatar to lead the US Box Office for 6 consecutive weeks. Off that prompt, I decided to look up the last times that has happened before that. The list is just Titanic then some 80s movies when it was way easier to lead for that long (Good Morning, Vietnam, Crocodile Dundee, Back to the Future). But then I decided to check Box Office Mojo again. According to that site, The Wretched "only" led for 5 weeks. Still remarkable but a much more common achievement. Anyway, The Wretched's success is a nice reminder of how much COVID decimated things.

 

Regardless, this is a good horror movie. Coincidentally, I watched Fright Night a day before this and recognized a lot of similarities. Teen boy protagonist. A monster moves in next door and no one believes him. The Wretched amps things up though. It's a brutal movie. The body count is high with fewer protected characters than I thought. That thing ate a baby! It has some real fun with the body horror stuff. A lot of the horror is just how the bodies move.

 

I like the twist, although I'm not sure the movie was really playing fair. It's a fun idea, playing with how the monster or witch or whatever it is can wipe the characters' brains, but it implies that his memory was wiped at the beginning or that, like, our minds were wiped too. It really makes me question what a movie even is. Are movies tales that are being retold? Are they experiences that we are going through with the characters? Are they populist art installations? This movie really has accidentally given me an identity crisis. Intentional or not, that's good hoor.

 

Verdict: Strongly Recommend

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