Fresh and Exciting

Absolutely Fantastic

Not sure how, but this is easily one of the best movies all summer. Multiple levels of funny, never takes itself seriously, super colorful, and creative.

Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

This film will not entertain you. It may even upset you. If you want to have a good time, go watch Mr. Bean on vacation or Age of Ultron.This film is all about trying to understand a reality that may be totally alien to a normal person. Based on an experience Director Sebastian Silva had on a trip to Brazil, it portrays how seemingly mundane situations can turn out to be nightmarish for someone with traces of Paranoid-Schizophrenia: Alicia, a timid California girl, joins her cousin Sarah on a road trip to southern Chile. Along come Agustin (Sarah's boyfriend), Barbara (Agustin's older sister), and Brink, an annoying, hyper active and not very empathetic American friend of Agustin. Sarah is quickly out of the crew due to having to perform an exam to save her college year. Later on it is revealed that it was just an excuse to get an abortion. Her absence leaves Alicia alone with the trio of Spanish speaking strangers, which seem to increasingly alienate and harass her. Tension builds up slowly, as Brink and Agustin try to have fun just to make Alicia feel more and more uncomfortable and scared, escalating to a dramatic ending. Lots of scenes are beautifully filmed, and portray stunning panoramas of southern Chile's Lakes and mountains. (I'd dare to say the film's location is some isle on the middle of Lago Ranco) This film is filled with subtleties that will give you hints on how to understand Alice's seemingly insane behaviour. If you have had an experience with someone who suffers such a disease, you will understand it right on. It is not simple to achieve what Silva has masterfully done with this film. Not an easy to recommend film, but certainly a must watch.

Alicia (Juno Temple) arrives in Chile from the USA to visit her cousin Sara (Emily Browning) and her colourful group of friends. Tired from the long flight, Alicia's initial instinct is to get some sleep, but she's coerced by everyone else to join them straight away on their road trip. Sara jumps ship halfway along the journey to go back to Santiago to do an exam leaving Alicia with Sara's friends who are strangers to Alicia. However, Alicia isn't keen on Sara's friends which causes friction between Alicia and the rest of the group in her absence.There's nothing wrong with the concept here, but writer and director Sebastian Silva seems to lose interest very early on in attempting to flesh out Alicia's problems resulting from her sleep depravation. It might have been better if Silva would have spent more time focusing on how Alicia's sleep depravation was affecting her mind and perhaps offer more insight into her as a character. Instead he seems more content in creating a film which is mean-spirited for the most part and also puts a lot of his focus on the obnoxious and unlikeable supporting cast. Michael Cera is supposed to be the creepy, unnerving guy here, but he lacks the screen presence or the acting ability to really make this aspect work. He's nothing more than a creepy pervert (and an irritating one at that). The rest of the supporting cast fare no better with only Emily Browning managing to show a bit of gravitas with the limited screen time that she was given.The screenplay is also a complete joke and throws in many ridiculous scenarios; Sara disappearing back home to take an exam leaving Alicia with a bunch of strangers. What's even more strange is Alicia later gets a phone call from Sara saying that she knew this was going to happen (like she set her up for it), but then that thread was closed making me wonder what the point of it was? Worse still, we then see Alicia doing all kinds of things that are completely out of character which seemed to have stemmed from when she was hypnotised - OK you could say that somehow she may have become possessed following the hypnosis, but how and why? I'm all for films that leave you with things to think about, but it felt like Silva just couldn't be bothered putting any effort in and just left it for the audience to do all the work.The film ends in an open ended way which to me is always a bit of a gamble. It can work if the narrative and characters are fleshed out in such a way that it leaves you thinking about it at the end, However, the thin plot that was served up here meant that this was never going to be the case and it once again highlights the laziness of this film.Ending on a positive note, I thought that Juno Temple was excellent in her role. Accentuating vulnerability and naivety when required, but then effortlessly switching to her darker alter ego. She really was great and it is a pity that Silva gave her next to nothing to work with. Although Temple is a promising young actress and her performance makes some of this tolerable, the film as a whole is mean-spirited, obnoxious and not a particularly pleasant viewing experience.

Interesting and unusual.A mousy girl suffers deadly anxiety amongst strangers who react in ways that provoke her decline.Not much of a logline, but this is brilliantly observed. The touches of social awkwardness, fear, delusion, psychosis are really well played by the actress, and I found her completely convincing. That's the first time I've seen a film bothering to show this kind of character, who goes into a mental frenzy because she's so fearful of the harsh company of others, the constant evidence of death. Very sad.And the rest of the cast does a great job weaving a web of cruelty, contempt, indifference, caring.The end is bizarre, and I suppose the abortion subplot should have tied in more tightly with the death. All the pills and the doctoring, from the psychiatrist prescriptions through the friends to the witchdoctors, only hasten the inevitable. I suppose that makes the title a sarcastic dig at our efforts to treat mental illness. That's something to reflect on, so I mark it up.Music excellent,

I guess with a title like this, you can be excused expecting something different. Maybe even the trailer suggest something else (haven't seen that obviously), but the movie at hand is a very weird one. It seems to go one direction and then strays away and gives us this "What the heck?" kind of movie.There is nudity in here, which I didn't expect, but it shouldn't influence your movie watching experience in a good or bad way. It's just there ... just as the things the characters do. It's also very interesting to see how the characters (humans) are light when it comes to seeing hurt animals and how they react when another human being is hurting. There is a bad behavior sort of theme running through and it's pretty clear what the "message" is supposed to be ...More than interesting experiment, if you let yourself experience it