Murder Mystery | Film Review

Hey Guys x

Here's my review of the latest Netflix original movie. Apparently it got something like 30 million views in it's first three days, so I had to see what all the fuss was about.

Nick (Adam Sandler) and Audrey Spitz (Jennifer Aniston) are a couple from New York who are flying to Europe when they meet Charles Cavendish (Luke Evans), a rich man who invites them on the trip of a lifetime - a vacation on his family's yacht. But when a gruesome murder takes place on the yacht, and the American couple are framed, they have to work out who the real murderer is, before it's too late.

I went into this film with low expectations and came out really pleasantly surprised.

First of all, there is a great introduction to Adam Sandler's character. The contrast between being really competent while on the job (he's a detective) and really incompetent at home was so interesting, and a good way of telling the audience exactly who he is before we really know anything else about him.

There are a whole host of interesting characters to get stuck into. For the most part, they're all 2-dimensional fillers, but they're all really fun nonetheless.
In addition, there's not too many characters that you get confused with them, which could easily happen in a film like this, where some characters are more important and get more screen time than others.

You don't get to know the characters particularly well (with the exception of the main couple, somewhat), but it never really matters. At no point were you wondering about the ins and outs of these people, you're just trying to work out which one of them has the best motive for murder.

Stories like these are always interesting because everyone watching will have a different theory about the killer, and everyone thinks that their theory is the right one. I personally love murder-mystery, murder-thriller and slasher movies for this exact reason. They're as interactive as cinema can get without being actually interactive.

One particularly exciting thing about the film was the reveal. When you finally find out, in pieces, the truth about the murder, it comes out in such a way that's really exciting. Even when you think that you finally know what happened, you don't really know. This is the thing that the film did the best - working out who the killer was and why.

However, there were also some things about the film that I didn't like.

For a start, the initial meeting between Jennifer Aniston's character and Luke Evans' character was extremely cheesy. From the dialogue, to the setting, to the way that they looked at each other, it was all a bit much. It actually felt like reading an old murder mystery novel, which could have completely been the intention, and if it was, it was done well.
However, this whole paragraph could also be said for Charles Cavendish (Luke Evans) as a whole. From the first moment, he comes across as the stereotypical English villain, done in such a way that it's almost eye-roll inducing.

The detective character is the only character that is filler in a bad way. He's unrealistic, he's not conducting an investigation in the way that a real detective would, and if anything he's just a plot device. And not a great one, at that.

The relationship trouble subplot between Sandler and Aniston's characters is really weak and unnecessary. To be honest, the film would have been a lot better without including it at all.

Overall, the bad things about the film do not affect it's enjoy-ability at all. I really liked this film and would encourage everyone with a Netflix subscription to give it a chance and make up their own opinions on it.

7.5/10

Lou