I have seen reactions ranging from righteous disgust to rapturous joy. For me, this work is one that confounds me I will now explain why in great detail, in hopes that someone out there will come to understand why I feel this way about it.
I am no official or professional on this sort of thing, but I am a young black woman, so I can account for the upraising of my own childhood, and how strict my own parents are, and their testimonies of how strict their own parents were.
Is this a maddening and insulting romp into the world of the unseen? The premise of the drama in this is unique in that it explores an incestuous abusive relationship wherein the abuser is the younger and supposedly less powerful son. However, the son in this film is presented as powerful over his father, physically and emotionally. He abuses his father in both of these ways, and shows no remorse for his actions.
The premise almost seems like it should be done in a poorly made and disgustingly insensitive parody of all of the other movies covering horrifically abusive relationships. Slapstick about excessive slapping and all. However, the way this film handles itself is odd. I'm not someone who goes to movies very often myself, out of need of necessity overriding the urge to go out and have a good time at a movie theater. I rarely settle down for a movie unless it's for something that I know will ultimately be very wholesome, like a cartoon movie to lift my own spirits. This film, in its entirety, is not one of those things. Even Get Out left me feeling more rapturous than this.
Venturing into spoiler territory, I have to commend the person who acted as the father. The directions given to him were quite odd, but you can definitely tell he poured his all into it. I have no doubt in my mind that he wanted to put his effort into it, possibly out of kindness or possibly just for the paycheck. A lot of people enjoy knowing they earned what they earned fairly, and putting forth a good performance for a healthy payment is assuredly so.
There's a lot of controversy about this movie being written by a white man, and how this alone leads him to be ignorant about black culture. A lot of people feel as if this casting decision is an attempt to 'seem woke'. To me, it just adds to the oddity of it all. Black families, as far as I have experienced myself, are headstrong and disciplinary to the point where you come to fear your parents, not the other way around. To see a father dreading his son finding his confession to his wife is odd to me, not because it illicits feelings of humor within me, but because the sight is so alien to me because I can much better imagine the father being in the place of the abuser, rather than the son.
Is this predisposition part of a bigger issue? Well, I wouldn't know myself. I don't research statistics, but I do know that typically movies about incestuous sexual abuse focus on very specific power dynamics. Parent versus child, and older/stronger sibling versus younger/weaker sibling. These dynamics cause us to feel great concern for the victim, because what if they can't get out of that horrid situation? What if they're stuck there to suffer for eternity? Will they ever stand up and fight for themselves?
It is so odd to me, how ultimately this film would make much more sense if the son and father's roles were reversed, and yet the writer obviously put work into making this idea seem plausible as well.
So is it something meant to highlight a vicious and well-hidden issue, or a romp in disgusting racism hidden in plain sight?
Well, that's what different people are for. An axiom by once such Sedgwick: people are different from one another. I myself found this film to be... an experience, but not one I would ever particularly cherish for myself. I would not put myself through this again, not willingly and not if I could help it. It settles an unpleasant and bile-filled feeling in my stomach, not aimed towards anyone in particular, but aimed towards the entire film and its overall plot. It's so strange and unshakably visceral that I can only find myself wishing I had never come to experience it, and just stuck to seeing that odd clip of the man screaming in his bathtub after his son melodramatically kicks the door in.
I give it 4 stars for presenting an idea I'd never thought of before, but I have to revoke 6 stars for its unpleasantness, the odd and disgusting feeling in my stomach, the poor direction for one very good actor (especially during the scene leading to his death), the son's odd and unclear character, the mother's inaction that ultimately comes off as extremely unrealistic, the father's ultimately subordinate nature to his son after being raped for so long when so many black men are forced into the narrative of 'never choose flight', and the beginning scene that was framed in such a way that I was forced to bear the mental image of a 12-year-old pleasuring himself to his father's photograph.
So this film gets a 4 out of 10.
I am no official or professional on this sort of thing, but I am a young black woman, so I can account for the upraising of my own childhood, and how strict my own parents are, and their testimonies of how strict their own parents were.
Is this a maddening and insulting romp into the world of the unseen? The premise of the drama in this is unique in that it explores an incestuous abusive relationship wherein the abuser is the younger and supposedly less powerful son. However, the son in this film is presented as powerful over his father, physically and emotionally. He abuses his father in both of these ways, and shows no remorse for his actions.
The premise almost seems like it should be done in a poorly made and disgustingly insensitive parody of all of the other movies covering horrifically abusive relationships. Slapstick about excessive slapping and all. However, the way this film handles itself is odd. I'm not someone who goes to movies very often myself, out of need of necessity overriding the urge to go out and have a good time at a movie theater. I rarely settle down for a movie unless it's for something that I know will ultimately be very wholesome, like a cartoon movie to lift my own spirits. This film, in its entirety, is not one of those things. Even Get Out left me feeling more rapturous than this.
Venturing into spoiler territory, I have to commend the person who acted as the father. The directions given to him were quite odd, but you can definitely tell he poured his all into it. I have no doubt in my mind that he wanted to put his effort into it, possibly out of kindness or possibly just for the paycheck. A lot of people enjoy knowing they earned what they earned fairly, and putting forth a good performance for a healthy payment is assuredly so.
There's a lot of controversy about this movie being written by a white man, and how this alone leads him to be ignorant about black culture. A lot of people feel as if this casting decision is an attempt to 'seem woke'. To me, it just adds to the oddity of it all. Black families, as far as I have experienced myself, are headstrong and disciplinary to the point where you come to fear your parents, not the other way around. To see a father dreading his son finding his confession to his wife is odd to me, not because it illicits feelings of humor within me, but because the sight is so alien to me because I can much better imagine the father being in the place of the abuser, rather than the son.
Is this predisposition part of a bigger issue? Well, I wouldn't know myself. I don't research statistics, but I do know that typically movies about incestuous sexual abuse focus on very specific power dynamics. Parent versus child, and older/stronger sibling versus younger/weaker sibling. These dynamics cause us to feel great concern for the victim, because what if they can't get out of that horrid situation? What if they're stuck there to suffer for eternity? Will they ever stand up and fight for themselves?
It is so odd to me, how ultimately this film would make much more sense if the son and father's roles were reversed, and yet the writer obviously put work into making this idea seem plausible as well.
So is it something meant to highlight a vicious and well-hidden issue, or a romp in disgusting racism hidden in plain sight?
Well, that's what different people are for. An axiom by once such Sedgwick: people are different from one another. I myself found this film to be... an experience, but not one I would ever particularly cherish for myself. I would not put myself through this again, not willingly and not if I could help it. It settles an unpleasant and bile-filled feeling in my stomach, not aimed towards anyone in particular, but aimed towards the entire film and its overall plot. It's so strange and unshakably visceral that I can only find myself wishing I had never come to experience it, and just stuck to seeing that odd clip of the man screaming in his bathtub after his son melodramatically kicks the door in.
I give it 4 stars for presenting an idea I'd never thought of before, but I have to revoke 6 stars for its unpleasantness, the odd and disgusting feeling in my stomach, the poor direction for one very good actor (especially during the scene leading to his death), the son's odd and unclear character, the mother's inaction that ultimately comes off as extremely unrealistic, the father's ultimately subordinate nature to his son after being raped for so long when so many black men are forced into the narrative of 'never choose flight', and the beginning scene that was framed in such a way that I was forced to bear the mental image of a 12-year-old pleasuring himself to his father's photograph.
So this film gets a 4 out of 10.