Summary
A lonely fisherman takes a peculiar job from a mysterious woman.
My Thoughts
Serenity is a hard movie to explain, it has a “see it to believe it” quality, and for all the wrong reasons. The movie starts with our protagonist Baker Dill (Matthew McConaughey, “Interstellar”) fishing for a really big tuna, he almost gets the tuna, but then the tuna gets away, it doesn’t make a lot of sense, which is a great setup for the rest of the movie. I’m going to be as vague as possible with this one, it’s such a bizarre experience that it’s hard not to recommend, but it must be seen with the right mindset, which is none, turn off your brain, because that’s what the writer/director did.
The first half of this film plays out in a sort of neo-noir gone wrong way, the characters are full of silly mysteries and secrets, lots of whispering and even more exposition, woven together with boring cinematography, and lousy direction. Mid-way through a twist hits (you’ll see it coming within the first 15 minutes), it’s so unreal, and so incredibly silly; it’s hard not to keep watching.
Steven Knight (“Eastern Promises”, “Seventh Son”) writes and directs this bonkers story that goes nowhere very fast. Whatever fever dream he took this from, it was better off in his head. Serenity may go down as one of the finest “so bad it’s good” films of the last decade. There are many times you will throw out your arms in confusion yelling, “what the f*ck!” and then never get answers to said confusion. The setups are paid off half way through the movie, and then your left with the paper thin characters trying to put the pieces together of a mystery the audience has already solved, and the way the characters go about is so mundane, and so stupid. It’s just unreal that this has an A-list cast, and got world wide distribution.
From the moment the plot is revealed and the twist has happened, the movie is a straight line, it’s flat, the characters do exactly as they say their going to do, there’s no arcs, no goals, there’s no real drama, a completely worthless sex scene that does nothing to enhance the story but rather make the narrative even more sloppy. The dialogue is cringe worthy, and wonderfully laughable, Steven Knight must’ve gotten some tips from George Lucas. The performances for the most part aren’t terrible, McConaughey gives his best Nicolas Cage, Anne Hathaway (“Ocean’s 8”) plays cat woman on vacation, Jason Clarke (“Chappaquiddick”) is the nasty nasty abusive husband, and I don’t know why Djimon Hounsou (“Shazam”) is there, but he is! The whole plot revolves around Karen (Hathaway) giving Dill a bunch of money to kill Frank (Clarke), then hilarious and just obscure events occur and by the end of it nothing really happens and no one really feels anything, it’s a completely empty experience void of any human touch.
As stated before, it’s hard for me not to recommend this movie, simply because it’s so bad it’s good. I plan on watching this with friends for the ample laughs it will provide. It’s a mind-boggling thing to watch, even though essentially you are watching nothing happen. Next time you’re hosting a bad movie night, try checking Serenity out, it’s the first great bad movie of 2019. I give Serenity 2 out of 5 stars.
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