Eternals (2021)

If you want some wholesome and enjoyable content to make you smile then you should check out the many photos of Lia McHugh on her IMDb page. Most of them have clearly been out there by McHugh herself, complete with contextualising text descriptions that show how much she loves her acting career.

If you can spend two hours browsing that selection of photos then you will probably have a better time than you would if you actually watched Eternals, a Marvel movie that feels more redundant than any others we have seen so far.

Described as Earth’s first superheroes, Eternals are a group of people with different powers who work together to help care for the human race. They can only ever intervene when humans are being attacked by monsters called deviants, which conveniently explains why they never tried to help when “the snap” happened, and most of their time is spent just observing people and trying to act like one of them. There hasn’t been any deviant attack for a long, long time. And then there is one, one unlike the others. This deviant may be able to absorb powers while it takes lives. And it may reveal a truth about the Eternals that they will struggle to accept.

Although it’s not actually a bad movie, in many ways, I can feel my enthusiasm for this film ebbing away with every word I write. There is a mildly interesting development in the second half that takes things in a slightly unexpected direction, but the end result is still a group of people dealing with some giant CGI. What’s worse is that the more enjoyable characters seem to be too quickly dismissed from the action.

Director Chloé Zhao, who also helped write the screenplay (Patrick Burleigh and Ryan Firpo being the other writers on this), does what is expected of her, trying to liven things up enough with an action sequence here and there to distract from the fact that these are the dullest superheroes we have seen in a long time. Sadly, she cannot do enough to make up for the central problem.

At least the cast help, although the lead being played by Gemma Chan leads to the big problem of, well, the lead being played by Gemma Chan. Richard Madden does a bit better, as does the aforementioned McHugh, but the best cast members are Angelina Jolie, Brian Tyree Henry, and Kumail Nanjiani. Barry Keoghan plays an interesting character, but plays him as if he can barely be bothered to stay awake. I don’t blame him, it’s a tough job to stay energised with such a mix of deja vu and plodding mediocrity. Even Salma Hayek cannot help, although her relatively small amount of screentime was better than no Hayek at all.

There is a nice cross-section of characters here (Lauren Ridloff is a deaf Flash-like character who speaks in sign language), but the bad outweighs the good. By far. With the pacing issues, the inability to engage viewers properly, and the tired feeling the material has, I have to say that this is the weakest big MCU movie so far. I hope it is an anomaly.

4/10

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The Lodge (2019)

From Severin Fiala and Veronika Franz, the people who co-directed and co-wrote Goodnight Mommy (joined this time by an extra writer, Sergio Casci), comes this tale of isolation, horror, and madness. And it all stems from a pair of kids upset by their parents divorcing.

Jaeden Martell and Lia McHugh are Aiden and Mia, a brother and sister who are understandably upset when their mother reacts badly to news of divorce proceedings by killing herself. They blame the new woman (Grace, played by Riley Keough) who is due to marry their father (Richard Armitage). With that friction crackling away between them, the foursome head to an isolated holiday lodge. Maybe relations will improve. But strange things start to happen once their father is called away on business. Are they playing tricks on one another, or does it all have something to do with Grace's disturbing past spent within a strict and controlling cult?

Once again focusing on a pair of children who are acting oddly around a disturbed parental figure, Fiala and Franz certainly seem comfortable in their chosen niche. It's a shame that neither of their two main fictional features have so far been entirely successful. The Lodge works better than Goodnight Mommy, for the most part, because there is more interaction between the adult and the children, and there's a sense of tension that builds nicely, even if things fall apart once you start to think about them in more detail. The Lodge is actually quite ridiculous, but the final scenes at least make it worthwhile. This is a bleak film, and maybe not one to quickly reach for if you're currently experiencing a bit of the Lockdown madness most of us have had at one point or another this year.

The cast are pretty faultless though, with major props due to the talented young duo of Martell and McHugh. The script allows them to act in a way that is believably childish, emotional, and spiteful, and you're on their side from the earliest scenes. Keough has to be a bit twitchy and highly-strung for a lot of the runtime, but she does it all well. Armitage is absent for a large chunk of the movie, but is absolutely fine in his main scenes, and Alicia Silverstone puts in another of the wonderful little performances she has been accruing over the past few years.

Fiala and Franz have an impressive visual style, both this and Goodnight Mommy have a clean and cold look for many scenes (although The Lodge has a much colder environment being shown, literally), and I hope that they keep working hard on whatever might become the material that best matches up with their obvious talent. This is a step in the right direction, but still falls just a bit short of the mark to be really good.

6/10

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