Ridiculous amounts of cartoonish violence and ennui.
BQB here with a review of Netflix’s, I Don’t Feel at Home in This World Anymore.
Ruth (Melanie Lynskey), a nursing assistant, is epically bummed. Inconsiderate people surround her wherever she goes. From the guy at the supermarket who always drops something on the floor then leaves it for someone else to pick up, to the dude with unnecessarily huge exhaust pipes on his truck belching smoke into the air, to whoever is allowing their dog to poop on her lawn everyday, there just seems to be an unmitigated lack of concern for others in this world.
All these bad vibes culminate when her house is robbed. Rather than go the usual route of being content to file a police report that goes nowhere, she snaps and sets out on a mission to hunt the house robbers down.
She finds a sidekick in her neighbor Tony (Elijah Wood), a martial arts enthusiast who is more likely to nunchuck himself than actually do anything useful.
At first, I thought this was going to be a dark comedy, almost a parody of the 1993 film Falling Down, in which frustrated office worker Michael Douglas snaps and lashes out at all the flaws in society, even going so far as to pull a gun on the fast food worker who refuses to make him breakfast after 11 am.
But no. Instead, as Ruth and Tony delve deeper into the criminal underworld to which the home invaders belong, the violence gets bigger, badder, bolder, and frankly, ends up being absurd, comical and a gonzo-esque attempt to freak out the viewer.
I’m not sure how to describe it. It wants to be a dark comedy but it isn’t that funny. Or, if that was the intention, someone behind the film mistook shock for comedy. At any rate, the body count piles up and Elijah Wood delivers the few laughs of the film.
STATUS: Bordeling shelf-worthy. It starts well then loses its way. But if you’ve got Netflix and nothing else to do, check it out.
Bookshelf Battle 