Serenity (2019)

I love great mysteries with twists, films that are about something different than they appear to be. But these films walk a razor's edge between pulling it off and failing (often miserably). Serenity quite early on proves it's not going to make it and as the film begins to unravel it's enigmatic plot, it fumbles its way along until its hard for the audience to care much about it, let alone buy into it.

These movies make it hard to talk about why it doesn't work without spoiling it. I won't spoil the "mystery" but will say that it is one of those reveals that once you understand it, it actually makes the rest of the movie make less sense. Basically the film, which is set up with the tropes of the sensual thriller genre is revealed to be something else, and that something else would not lead to the sort of story which would be told in the sensual thriller genre, not without a whole lot of ewwww factor. Once the reveal comes out, and it's not sudden, the film starts to build to it early and clumsily so it starts to become clear sooner than it probably should, it makes the rest of the film feel rather gross and to be honest somewhat pointless. Again once you understand the twist, you question, "well then why was this here?" and "why did that happen?" So much of it is illogical in light of what's really going on.

For this film's premise to have worked it would have needed to develop a lot more trust in its audience, build a more believable world for it to take place in, and perhaps make its story beats more subtle. Serenity is so heavy handed throughout it poisons the mystery so it doesn't feel as fun as it should. It could have been a pulpy, sexy, scandalous thriller but it ends up being mostly clunky.

Another thing needed for a film like this to work is for the story within a story to be more compelling. With Serenity it almost feels like the film makers didn't feel the need to make their main plot compelling enough, relying solely on the twist to save it. And perhaps if we had been truly invested in the main story the twist could have been more impactful. And what is especially surprising about this this is that it comes from the remarkable film maker who shot a whole movie of Tom Hardy driving in a car and made it one of the most compelling and engaging movies I've ever seen. Here he has sexy people half naked and I can't seem to get worked up about what I'm watching.

Serenity just doesn't pull off what it is trying to and makes you wonder why you spent the time wading through it in the first place.

Serenity
Starring: Matthew McConaughey, Anne Hathaway, Diane Lane, Jason Clarke, Djimon, Hounsou, Jeremy Strong
Writer/Director: Steven Knight