THE A.W.N.'s TOP 10 MOVIES THAT FAILED (6-1)
6. MONOLITH
This is a sci-fi movie with a simple idea, a young mother gets a very secure, high-tech smart car that is designed to be completely safe and totally impenetrable… but she accidentally locks her son in the car in the middle of the desert, and she has to get him out before he dies in a hot car. It’s an interesting idea, because it's taking a thing which can be quite scary for a new parent (i.e. locking your kid in the car), and takes away the easiest solutions. She can't get help, because she's in the middle of a desert; she can't wait for help, because she's on an abandoned road; she can't call for help because her phone is in the car too & she can't just break the window or rip open a door, because the security of this high-tech car is really advanced, and she can't bypass it.
So, this film is basically taking a simple adult fear—locking your child in your car—and takes it to the extreme. It's a brilliant idea for a film.
Where it Fails: This is a sci-fi movie. Yes, the concept relies entirely on that simple fear of locking your kid in the car, but after trying to break the windows, she doesn't really do anything. She runs off looking for help, but can't find it, then comes back and tries to light a fire in the hopes the car will be forced to open the doors (because of some AI fire suppression system, I guess), but beyond that, she doesn't really do much to actually try to save her kid. She finds a plane in the desert; she fights a coyote with a rock... but this movie spends more time with dream sequences than with her actually trying to get into the car, and the reason for this is because everything they did to force this premise also made the movie boring. They made the car impenetrable... but, because the movie is about her trying to get into the car, all of her efforts seem pointless. The victim has to be a kid, that's the basic idea, but because this is a movie, I knew the kid couldn't be in actual danger - killing children in your movie is generally frowned upon. There can't be any outside help, because otherwise she wouldn't feel helpless.
But, what this really failed to do was actually dive deeper into the theme. Because you know what the real fear is here? It's failing as a mother (or, parent, but this movie was clearly aimed at motherhood). I like how, the reason why she can't call for help is that she gave the kid her phone, to watch dumb cartoons and keep him pacified; I'm sorry, but I see that as poor parenting. And I thought the film would explore that in-depth. Like, here's three more scenes this movie needed: How about she tries to get her kid to unbuckle his own seatbelt, so she teaches him how to do it - he struggles at first, but when he finally pushes the button, the car bleeps a warning: "UNDERAGED SAFETY SEAT TAMPERING" or whatever. Or, what if her son is getting upset because he's hungry, so she tries to talk to him, to calm hi down, but he gets upset and starts screaming, so the car (assuming she's a stranger scaring the child) makes the windows go opaque, and soundproof. Or, what if she waits for the car to go into some kind of power-saving/stand-by mode at night (solar power? I dunno), so she can open the bonnet and reset the computer. But, when she touches the engine, the car re-activates, slams the bonnet shut and sets off the car alarm, waking up her son, who was sleeping. These are just three ideas I came up with, sitting here, and all of them in some way explore how she was trying to make her son more comfortable, and attempting to save him, but the car "protected" him, by being overprotective, and making things worse.
I'm not saying I could write this movie better than the original writer (although, I do believe that), but I'm saying, the premise here was exploring the fear of locking your child in the car - which is ultimately the fear of being a bad parent, and by deliberately comparing and contrasting this "instant-gratification, fix the immediate problem, give the kid the phone" approach against this "overbearing, overprotective" approach. Both of which are, in their own ways, extreme forms of bad parenting.
But no, this film basically became a series of scenes where a woman fails to get into a car, because "the designers thought of that", until she finally manages to get into the car, because "well, the designers must not have thought of that."
The worst part is, I sought out this movie because it sounded interesting, I really wanted to see how someone would explore these concepts. But, I liked this movie a lot more before I watched it.
5. UNSANE
This movie actually has two key concepts. Firstly, can you film an entire movie just using mobile phone camera? Phone camera quality is so high these days, you can easily get an HD movie on an iPhone 7 Plus (which is how they filmed this movie). But more importantly, and thematically, Are you crazy?
It's a simple question, but it's not exactly an easy one to answer. After all, if you're crazy, how would you know? And, if you're not, how can you prove it? What even is 'crazy'? As a person with chronic anxiety, I have occasionally deigned to ask myself whether I am crazy. In this film, a woman gets sent to a psychiatric hospital, and finds that she becomes trapped inside, even though she's perfectly sane... or, is she?
Where It Failed: In order to justify the premise, the plot of this film had to shoot itself in the foot. See, there was a fascinating experiment done in the 1970s, called the Rosenhan Experiment, wherein the first stage of the experiment, several mentally well people were put into a psychiatric hospital, and then attempted to have themselves released. The purpose of the experiment was to show that psychiatric hospitals are biased against letting people go and make it more difficult to get out than to get in, and it's true that some people weren't let out for several weeks, and only on the condition that they declared themselves to be mentally unwell, and take anti-psychotic medication, even though they suffered from no mental afflictions or symptoms. It's a fascinating study, but both it and this film have the same fundamental flaw. In order to get put into the psychiatric hospital, the participants in this study lied about having a mental illness, in the case of the study it was hallucinations. In this film, it begins with a woman being put into a mental institution for 24 hours because of her severe paranoia, after she unknowingly signed a voluntary admission contract. Also, due to traumatic stress being caused by a stalker, she genuinely does have paranoia and anxiety. That's a great concept... what isn't is that she then gets seven more days added to her 1-day stay, because she becomes aggressive and violent towards staff and fellow patients. I know it may seem harsh, but dude, I 100% agree with the decision to make her stay longer. So, when the story then develops into this whole "is she or isn't she crazy?" plot, with her convinced that one of her doctors is her stalker, that was a cool idea, but I couldn't help feeling like that was entirely her fault. She acted crazy. She's constantly acting antagonistic towards her doctors and nurses, and I don't blame them for treating her the way they did, which is not the way you want your audience to feel, when you want them to second-guess her sanity. I wasn't second-guessing her sanity, because she confirmed from the outset "yes, she's definitely got chronic paranoia, and violent tendencies"; I'm not a psychologist, but the way she acts is the textbook definition of paranoid and violent.
And, more annoying in my eyes, even when I was trying to get into the story, when they start revealing that this guy might be the stalker, I couldn't get invested because the film was hideous. I've seen good film-making on a phone - a lot of my favourite YouTubers have utilized mobile phone footage in their videos, but this whole film looks poorly contrasted, starkly lit, and because they often had to resort to setting up the phone camera perfectly still on a tripod, makes most of the shots and scenes look flat. So, both of the "big ideas" in this film - exploring a real issue whereby mental institutions profit off the forced incarceration of the mentally unstable; and filming an entire film with a consumer-level camera - failed horrendously. This film isn't the worst story on this list, it's got some interesting ideas, but it's one I least want to see again because it was so unappealing to look at.
4. BODIES BODIES BODIES
This is the most modern movie on the list, as it's still in cinemas, at time of writing, so if you want to see it without spoilers, skip this now. I wanted to see it simply because, I love murder mystery, and I am going to ruin the mystery if you read on. See, I saw that this film was a murder-mystery, comedy-horror film, and as a fan of all those things, I decided to watch it after seeing a trailer for it online. After I started watching it, I was even more intrigued - this film is actually inspired by the party game "Mafia" (you might also know it as "Werewolf"; or you may recognize the gameplay as near-identical to the videogame Among Us), a fun game where some players are secretly and randomly selected to be secret killers, and after killing someone during one phase of the game (often called the Night phase), players then must discuss who the potential killer is, and if they win a majority vote to kill a certain player, they die and must reveal their innocence/guilt. In the movie, during a thunderstorm at a secluded mansion party, they playing a version of this game called "Bodies Bodies Bodies", where characters wander freely around the house in the dark, and there's only one killer, but the game comes to a halt when one of the characters dies by getting their throat slit, and when the other partygoers fail to escape the house, they quickly start suspecting one another as the actual killer - especially as more and more of them start dying.
Where It Failed: There are a few problems with this movie, but I believe its biggest downfall was tone; specifically, this film shouldn't have been a comedy. Like with a lot of movies on this list, all of the attempts to fit the premise also helped make this film more boring. See, the reason why the Mafia party game is so much fun is, whilst it's ostensibly a game of guessing the killer from the actions at the table, it always ultimately becomes a game of pop-psychology, as players usually start guessing who the killer is based on the personality of every other player (it's why Among Us is such a clever videogame, by adding "minigames" to the gameplay which aliens can't do, it gives players who don't know each other the opportunity to see how others act when they're lying). But, because this is a comedy, all of the "discussion" scenes, where characters are talking about who the killer might be, seem to devolve into jokes about how these young characters are all self-obsessed teenagers, who represent the worst of modern internet culture's stereotypical douchebaggery. There's joking references to gaslighting; peer pressure; narcissism; drug addiction; victim-blaming; virtue signalling; self-diagnosis; anxiety & body dysmorphic disorder. Yes, they are making fun of all these things. I did genuinely find part of the "gas-lighting" joke funny, because there's some truth in it (it is an overused term), but the abusive relationship it hints at is pretty gross, and the rest of these "jokes" are pretty tone-deaf to the experiences of real people. As a big fan of PushingUpRoses, a mental health transparency advocate, and chronic BDD sufferer, I found these tongue-in-cheek references to body dysmorphia particularly distasteful, but when they were joking at the expense of the characters, I didn't find any of these "jokes" funny. But even if these jokes hadn't been so tasteless, the fact that they were making the most fun part of the game (the table discussions) into a series of jokes at the characters' expense, meant they were deliberately wasting the potential drama of these interactions by trying to make them funny.
And perhaps worst of all, the absolute climax of the game - learning who the actual killers were - and what I thought would be the dramatic pinch-point of the film, is ruined. I usually don't like spoiling murder mysteries, but trust me this doesn't spoil the movie, the movie spoiled itself...
See, the actual killer is... (are you ready for this?) Nobody... or, I guess everybody, in a way? The last scene of this film are the final two survivors finding the phone of the first victim, and finding a video of him attempting to film himself opening a bottle with a sabre, and failing so miserably that he slits his own throat in the attempt; and all the rest of the deaths were caused by either the paranoia of the partygoers after they "voted" to kill someone (although this decision was rarely democratic), or people dying accidentally, from misadventure, overdose & even a gun misfire. So, there was no satisfying answer to this mystery, and again, I feel this is because it shouldn't have been a comedy - but based on the actual solution to this mystery, I feel like the writers started with the idea of making this a comedy about people killing themselves because of paranoia, and just used the Mafia party game as a framework around which to build this comedy concept. But, the best part of this film was the horror, the blood and the somewhat realistic characterization of these people as they tried to figure out who the killer was, and that's mostly because of the talent of the actors. But, every time the film tried to be funny, it just undermined the horror since the tone was so off, every time I found myself asking "What was the writer thinking?"
I'd love to see a film that uses Mafia as the basis for a murder mystery (especially if it was like real Mafia, with two or more than one killers [I think ~20% of players are meant to be killers] meaning twice the mystery, or more). I'm also not opposed to another comedy-mystery that indulges in that premise of the killer-free twist in an And Then There Were None style plot (although obviously, I wouldn't want to know about that spoiler before I see it). But, by trying to indulge in both these concepts at once, this film ultimately failed at achieving either in any meaningful or enjoyable way.
3. SERENITY
I am not talking about the Joss Whedon movie, the film version of the cult classic Sci-fi Western, Firefly. Whilst that film has somes flaws, it didn't fail to achieve its goal of bringing Firefly to the big screen. No, the film I'm talking about today is actually a thriller starring Matthew McConaughey as a reclusive fisherman, who live on a gorgeous, island paradise escaping the hustle and bustle of modern society, as well as a "dark past" as a war veteran that he doesn't like talking about. But, things take a dark turn when his ex-wife comes to the island with her new husband, a vile, abusive criminal; and so the fisherman's wife asks him to do the unthinkable... take her husband out on a fishing trip, and murder him, to protect her and their son from this abusive monster. There's also a subplot about the fisherman trying to catch a massive, legendary fish in the surrounding oceans that he's failed to capture several times in the past; as well as a plot about how their son has become a reclusive shut-in, playing and creating videogames as he tries to escape from his dark reality.
Where It Failed: The Twist. Oh my god, the twist of this movie is so ridiculous, it has to be seen to be believed. Seriously, if you've never seen this movie, you should go and watch it, to see what the actual twist is, because it's so unexpected, so weird, so... well, wrong - it is an absolute shock to behold.
But, in order to talk about why this failed, I have to talk about the twist, so if you're intrigued by what kind of a twist could turn this neo-noir thriller set on a tropical paradise into a failed film... now's your last chance.
We good? We ready? Don't say I didn't warn you... okay, remember how I described the plot of the film, and threw in a part about how the kid of the main character has become a reclusive shut-in that plays and makes videogames. That's not just a throw-in, that's the crux of this film. See, the character Matthew McConaughey plays is actually dead - he's not a war veteren, he's a war victim, he died in Iraq, but he's not a ghost... rather, the character we're watching on screen the whole time is a videogame character, in a game this kid created to help remember his father, in a simple "Stardew Valley" style island paradise fishing game, with the goal of catching a mythically massive fish.
So, what's all the neo-noir stuff? Well, the stuff about the abusive father is all meant to be art imitating life, because the kid's step-father is actually an abusive piece of crap, who beats him and his mother. So he programs that into the game, ostensibly as a kind of "murder simulation" so that if the kid manages to kills the guy in the game he created, he presumably will garner the courage to kill his step-father in real life.
The problem is, looking back on the plot, this isn't just a twist for twist's sake, this is the point of the movie. It's meant to be a film about how characters realize they're in a videogame because the serenity of their peaceful island paradise is shattered by the interruption of the murder simulation mission is so out-of-character for the game that the game itself is fighting back against the new coding, typified by a man in a business suit who keeps interrupting the neo-noir thriller, to try to offer the fisherman a new piece of technology, which is effectively the game trying to coax him into returning to his fishing missions, by offering him a powerup that will make it possible for him to catch the big fish... It's a fascinating concept, but it's so poorly done that I'm left speechless when the neo-noir plot comes to a crashing halt whilst the main character becomes nihilistic about the unreality of his videogame reality. Not to mention... this game is meant to be programmed by a young boy, who looks to be a preteen, yet we're supposed to believe that he somehow created a videogame with hyper-realistic graphics, and artificial intelligence that's indistinguishable from the real thing. I think the fact that this focuses on a little kid makes the plot unbelievable, but at the same time, it had to be a "young kid" to justify the fact that he feels powerless, and doesn't know how to ask for help.
I actually really enjoy the idea of this movie, it's a whacko premise but I like out there ideas that try to push the envelope. For that reason, I'm not actually sure if this kind of premise is possible to do properly, but if there is a way to make a movie with a twist reveal that it's actually videogame characters fighting against their programming... this is not the way to do it.
2. THE BOOK OF HENRY
This movie is incredibly strange, but a fascinating attempt at deconstructing a "Family Film" trope, the Child Prodigy. There have been fascinating films about child prodigies who manage to solve complex problems, such as Matilda; Home Alone; Pay It Forward; Getting Even with Dad & doubtless several more. This film takes that premise, and takes it to an extreme - what if one of these child geniuses was forced to use their precocious talents, to plan and execute a murder plot? Oh, also, Trigger Warning for child abuse, child death & sexual assault.
Where It Failed: This movie is tonally schizophrenic, and its confused plotting fails to justify its own existence. Full-disclosure, there was another movie that I was going to put on this list, somewhere near the middle, but after doing research I realized... that movie wasn't a failure (it succeeded at what it set out to do) I just didn't like it. So, I decided to swap it out for another movie, and I remembered hearing about the awkward premise of this movie, and I sat down and watched it. I think it goes to show how much of a failure it was that a last-second substitution made it's way to number 2.
See, this film is about a precocious jerk called Henry (and that's not me being rude for no reason, he is constantly belittling others, especially his own mother; he bosses people around; ignores other people's opinions & never listens when others tell him to stop being rude). He has a crush on the girl next door, and this means he is hyper-aware of her well-being, and thus he is the first to notice the telltale signs that she's being sexually abused by her father. After trying and failing to get police, school administrators & child protective services to help her, he takes matters into his own hands and plans out an elaborate scheme... I mean, I say elaborate scheme, it ultimately comes down to: Step 1: Buy a Gun; Step 2: Shoot the Guy.
Henry is apparently willing to undertake this scheme, until he has several seizures, it's revealed he has an inoperable brain tumour, and soon after he dies in the hospital. He spends his last days writing the titular book (although it mostly takes the form of tape recordings), and he asks his mother to do it for him instead.
So, she buys the gun, she gets ready to shoot the guy. But, the big twist of the movie? The ultimate ending, the message this was all leading up to?
Whilst looking at him through the sniper sights on her gun, the mother character suddenly realizes "Henry's just a child", puts down the gun, and decides it's probably a bad idea to murder someone, just because your dying son asked you to.
This film has two basic premises, neither of which make sense. Firstly, it is deconstructing the child prodigy trope by showing how their prodigous, rube-goldberg engineering; precocious wisdom and youthful genius betrays their inexperience, lack of emotional intelligence, and naïve, black-and-white morality. However, by constantly showing Henry to be arrogant, disinterested in children his own age & controlling... it already shows the flaws of the child genius. Smart people are arrogant, and anti-social smart people tend to be unempathetic, so of course he's flawed that's blatantly obvious, so the big "twist" where we learn that smart kids "aren't that smart", isnt really a twist. I figured that out after the second time this jerk treated his mum like crap. But, the second part, the premise of putting a child prodigy to the extreme, by showing how one plans out an assassination... that's a bad idea, and the film knows it's a bad idea!
Remember: The "twist" in this film is the character realizing that the murder plot is a bad idea. So, what you have is a movie where the basic premise of the movie is "a smart child planning a murder" and the moral of the story is ultimately, "a smart child planning a murder is a bad idea". Presenting a novel, terrible idea, and concluding that it's a good idea to avoid that, isn't clever; its just stupidity with extra steps.
1. STAY
I've just realized that the top 4 films on this list all have a premise that hides it's thematic goals behind a twist which either hinders or harms the execution of the premise. And I don’t think a film can better illustrate this flaw, than Stay - trigger warning for heavy themes of suicide. See, the premise of Stay is that it's a psychological thriller about a psychologist whose latest patient, a deeply troubled young artist, and car crash survivor, says that he's going to kill himself in three days time. He also says he can predict the future, hears voices, and slowly the psychologist gets drawn into his patient's dark perspective, and he starts to lose his grip on reality.
Where It Failed: On every conceivable level, this movie fails to have a point. In this film, the first scene shows the car crash on the Brooklyn Bridge that the patient, Henry (played by Ryan Gosling) was the lone survivor of. After the psychologist, Sam (played by Ewan McGregor) learns that his patient is suicidal (because of his guilt) he tries to get to know him better, understand his past and save him. But reality starts unravelling, as Sam talks to his patient's "dead" parents, old psychologist and girlfriend, and the whole way through, surreal editing and cinematography gives the whole film an unreal, dreamy feel until the final scene where strings of reality litetally unravel as Henry finally prepares to kill himself, on that same bridge where he had his accident.
What happens next? Well... we cut to the scene where Henry had his car crash, and was the lone survivor... but instead of surviving and walking away, he is left bleeding out on the road, as several people rush over to help him. During the scene as he lays dying, several of the characters throughout the movie reappear, and several of the strange pieces of dialogue are shown in their proper context. See... the entire movie was all the dying dreams of a man that just had a fatal car accident. None of what we saw happened, it's all a tangled mess of his dying moments.
Now, quickly, what do you think the purpose of this story is? Is it about suicide? Is it about reality slipping away in our final moments of mortality? Is it about the importance of wearing a seatbelt?
Well, according to one source on IMDB, the main point of this film is meant to be an exploration of survivor's guilt. But how is that the theme? How does trippy-drippy surreality help evoke guilt? How do Ewan McGregor's character's poorly tailored trousers help illustrate the blame one feels for outliving another?
Now, I don't actually know if that's the genuine theme, but I find it convincing because if that's the case, it sort of explains the title: "stay" as in "stay with me" (something people say to someone who's losing consciousness due to blood loss), or even "why did I have to stay (live), when everyone else had to go (die)", a bit more on the nose, but it does kind of make sense. I can't tell you if that's definitely right, though, because the film is such a mess. The only way I could possibly say this film was not a failure is if the intended goal of the writer was "show how confusing and surreal dreams are". If that was the goal, congratulations, you did it... I mean, I already knew that, dreams are surreal by definition but good job if that was your intent. I looked up who the writer was, and apparently its David Benioff... you night recognize him as one half of the writing duo that ruined Game of Thrones (I guess he always sucked ay writing), but he never explicitly states what the point of this movie was.
So if you ask me what this film was about, why it was made, all I can do is shrug. Everything about this movie seems designed to obfuscate any kind of meaning, theme or purpose, and left me confused. So, if your goal was to make an entertaining movie, well, you failed at that as well, and that's why it's number 1 on this list.
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I'm the Absurd Word Nerd and, finally, those are the Top 10 films I've seen, which failed. Let me know if you've seen these (or if I spoiled them for you... I did warn you). And, can you think of any films that failed to achieve the filmmaker's goals? I'd love for you to let me know in the comments below.
Until Next Time, we have one day left in the countdown, Halloween approaches and it's almost time for the scares... but I still have one more post before the devil's night is upon us. I look forward to seeing you then.
