This movie starts with a very cliched set of events. The troubled country bumpkin warned by her homey loving Granny about the evils of the big city. The fish out of water not cutting it with the Mean Girls. As soon as the guy offers to help her on the step...I thought...OK...he is the love interest. She overhears them catting about her in the bathroom. This just seemed like a bad teen movie.
Then it seems to be turning into some kind of off-beat musical where she begins to dream herself into 60's Soho and sees (or inhabits) an Austin Powers sixty party girl trying to make it. Only this isn't a rocker flower-power Rolling Stones London, it is more like a remnant of the fifties and old school suit and tie club scene...only the young girls are rocking the minis and the boots.
So...our hero is inspired in fashion design by her dreams, but then everything takes a dark turn.
And we are in some kind of murder mystery movie. She is through her dreams, some kind of clairvoyant getting vibes of a long ago case. Only then it turns into a horror movie...and the final events play out in the present day..
Thomasin McKenzie seems like she is doing what the director wants...play the simpleton bumpkin. She is at first mousy, then pretty with big-eyed innocence. She is so innocent that her casual interracial relationship based on little chemistry or emotional investment doesn't really work. I was rooting for her, but the juxtapositions of her character and the possibility that she could be crazy just make the role kind of weird.
Anna Taylor Joy does the Hippy Shake and rocks the look, but playing the apparition of a lost age...she really doesn't have to do much.
Diana Riggs is gem. Terrance Stamp is not really developed, which makes sense in the trajectory of the plot, since we aren't supposed to root for him, and he does menacing so well that I wish his part had been bigger. Michael Ajao also need a larger roll. Basically he is a complete stranger who keeps saying 'you can talk to me' for some reason to a weird crazy chick. You don't really care about him, his relationship with her doesn't really click given her character, and the film just didn't put him in the plot enough for us to accept him or care about him.
I think this would have worked better without the Mean Girls, and without the horror. You could have had a pretty tense psychological thriller about a prescient clairvoyant uncovering a sordid sixties murder story. Instead we got weighed down into too many half thought out ideas and directions.
Then it seems to be turning into some kind of off-beat musical where she begins to dream herself into 60's Soho and sees (or inhabits) an Austin Powers sixty party girl trying to make it. Only this isn't a rocker flower-power Rolling Stones London, it is more like a remnant of the fifties and old school suit and tie club scene...only the young girls are rocking the minis and the boots.
So...our hero is inspired in fashion design by her dreams, but then everything takes a dark turn.
And we are in some kind of murder mystery movie. She is through her dreams, some kind of clairvoyant getting vibes of a long ago case. Only then it turns into a horror movie...and the final events play out in the present day..
Thomasin McKenzie seems like she is doing what the director wants...play the simpleton bumpkin. She is at first mousy, then pretty with big-eyed innocence. She is so innocent that her casual interracial relationship based on little chemistry or emotional investment doesn't really work. I was rooting for her, but the juxtapositions of her character and the possibility that she could be crazy just make the role kind of weird.
Anna Taylor Joy does the Hippy Shake and rocks the look, but playing the apparition of a lost age...she really doesn't have to do much.
Diana Riggs is gem. Terrance Stamp is not really developed, which makes sense in the trajectory of the plot, since we aren't supposed to root for him, and he does menacing so well that I wish his part had been bigger. Michael Ajao also need a larger roll. Basically he is a complete stranger who keeps saying 'you can talk to me' for some reason to a weird crazy chick. You don't really care about him, his relationship with her doesn't really click given her character, and the film just didn't put him in the plot enough for us to accept him or care about him.
I think this would have worked better without the Mean Girls, and without the horror. You could have had a pretty tense psychological thriller about a prescient clairvoyant uncovering a sordid sixties murder story. Instead we got weighed down into too many half thought out ideas and directions.