Michael Pearce’s directorial debut promises thrills with a story of love and murder on the island of Jersey. Four young girls have gone missing and two trouble young lovers are caught up in an investigation where everyone’s a subject.
Yes, you’d heard it before, except this time it’s executed dreadfully and is a complete waste of everyone’s time. One can only hope this is the end of Pearce’s career and all those involved in this film give up on their dream of working in film.
Society has filters so films this bad cannot be made. We live in hope that producers, casters and cinematographers have the chivalry to pull the director decide and tell him, “maybe 50 slow motion love up compilations is too many” or “do you realise every single sentence in this film is a cliché?”. It makes me feel as if the director has been living in a bunker in Carlisle, studying every film in existence but forgetting humans don’t speak like stuttering robotic mongoloids that occasionally leak from their viewing sockets.
What about when a scene builds up to a dramatic finish? I know, how about the main character just screams into the camera with the sound turned down? Great, that’s drama! Done. Next scene. How about a slow mo, because I think the audience might just need reminding there are lots of thoughts in the main characters head and they’re all coo-coo so the audience can’t understand them and I have literally no imagination so slo-mo. All I need is millions of pounds of BFI money and a load of old people bored of doing something constructive on a Sunday afternoon.