Every Breath You Take | Film Review

 

I saw the trailer for this movie ages ago, and was really intrigued by both the premise and the actors involved. Thankfully it's a Sky Cinema original, so I could see it as soon as it came out.

After the death of a patient, a therapist's (Casey Affleck) life is turned upside down when he introduces his deceased patient's brother (Sam Claflin) to his family. 

I saw this film a little while ago and I still have questions - mainly, what was the point of this film, and why was it made?

As I said, I really liked the premise. It was interesting, could go in a variety of different directions, and had a good enough cast to see it through.

Unfortunately, it went in a weird direction really quickly.

For a start, it was really unrealistic and far-fetched. You can't really work out where the story's going because it doesn't make sense - particularly in relation to Sam Claflin's character James. Why did the family allow this stranger into their lives, and what is his goal?

These characters aren't particularly strong or three-dimensional. I didn't believe their relationships, and I didn't believe who they were supposed to be. I also didn't really understand the relationships that these characters had to James - again, it didn't make sense. I'm not sure if this is a fault of the writing or direction, but stronger characters would have really improved the film.

This film was so much longer than it needed to be. Things are drawn out unnecessarily, and it moves so slowly that you end up just being bored, waiting for things to happen. Essentially, waiting for things to get better.

After getting about halfway through, I stopped caring about the characters, and about how the film would end. I didn't care what happened to them. Which was fine because the ending wasn't anything special. In fact, other than the obvious plot-twist, it was quite bland.

I'm a fan of every main actor in this film, Casey Affleck, Sam Claflin, Michelle Monaghan and India Eisley, so I was really disappointed that they didn't have much to work with here. 

Overall, you can tell that I'm not a huge fan of the movie. I really liked the premise, and I appreciated the idea behind it and what the filmmakers tried to do, but the end result wasn't great.

2/10