Serenity
Directed by: Steven Knight
Written by: Steven Knight
Starring: Matthew McConaughey, Anne Hathaway, Jason Clarke, Djimon Hounsou, Diane Lane, Jeremy Strong, Garion Dowds, Rafael Sayegh, Kenneth Fok
Drama/Thriller - 106 min Reviewed by Charlie Juhl on 24 Jan 2019
Written by: Steven Knight
Starring: Matthew McConaughey, Anne Hathaway, Jason Clarke, Djimon Hounsou, Diane Lane, Jeremy Strong, Garion Dowds, Rafael Sayegh, Kenneth Fok
Drama/Thriller - 106 min Reviewed by Charlie Juhl on 24 Jan 2019
When done right, psychological thrillers can nail audiences to their seats, enrapture them, and ensure the conversations on the drive home are full of “I guessed it” bravado or “I never would have guessed it in a thousand years” humility. Gone Girl, Shutter Island, Memento, and Seven, to name a few, are examples of psychological thrillers which captured America’s attention and dominated Monday morning’s water cooler chit chat. Serenity may garner a mention at the water cooler come Monday, but it won’t be with reverential and awe struck tones. “Insane” and “what did I just watch” are more likely to be overheard in cubicle land. Give writer/director Steven Knight an award for trying something different, but the sheer chutzpah of what he attempts to achieve with an A-list cast and an A-potential idea, is all washed away as Knight overplays his hand and earns the “you’ll never see this coming” ending the hard way.
‘Would you or wouldn’t you’ tough choices are the bread and butter of the psych thriller. Small time fisherman Baker Dill (Matthew McConaughey, The Dark Tower) is confronted with a doozy. Baker’s ex-wife, Karen (Anne Hathaway, Ocean's 8), offers Baker $10 million cash to take her husband out fishing, kill him, dump the body overboard for the sharks, and all parties will walk away from this transaction happy. Baker will be able to pay off his boat and devote all his energy to hunting an elusive tuna which mocks him on more than one occasion. Karen will be rid of an abusive husband and, perhaps most important, Baker’s son will be rid of a terrifying step-father. The audience automatically knows nothing is probably as it seems here and Baker is the right amount of both skeptical and pissed off that Karen dumps this problem in his lap.
‘Would you or wouldn’t you’ tough choices are the bread and butter of the psych thriller. Small time fisherman Baker Dill (Matthew McConaughey, The Dark Tower) is confronted with a doozy. Baker’s ex-wife, Karen (Anne Hathaway, Ocean's 8), offers Baker $10 million cash to take her husband out fishing, kill him, dump the body overboard for the sharks, and all parties will walk away from this transaction happy. Baker will be able to pay off his boat and devote all his energy to hunting an elusive tuna which mocks him on more than one occasion. Karen will be rid of an abusive husband and, perhaps most important, Baker’s son will be rid of a terrifying step-father. The audience automatically knows nothing is probably as it seems here and Baker is the right amount of both skeptical and pissed off that Karen dumps this problem in his lap.
It already looks like Baker lives in paradise; what does he need $10 million for? He scrapes by through tourist money shuttling overweight mainlanders out to sea promising them beer and stories to tell. Baker wouldn’t be so hard up if he focused on the overpaying clientele and catching the easy fish the local distributors want. But Baker is a man possessed. He named his maritime foe Justice, the kind of fish the angler knows is out there and the rest of the island folk believe is a myth. When Baker bottoms out with no cash and no fish, he drops by the abode of a woman always welcome to exchange a bit of funding for a tumble in the sheets. Played by Diane Lane (Justice League), I cannot wrap my head around the purpose of this character. I want to assume most of her scenes ended up on the editing room floor; otherwise, there is no explanation for a most unbelievable character.
The situation between Baker, Karen, and her current husband, Frank (Jason Clarke, First Man), seems to be a standard triangle. Baker isn’t pining to win Karen back, but when she shows up out of the blue at the bar to make Baker the initial offer, she utters the magic words most ex-husbands want to hear, “You were right and I was wrong.” Frank is a cartoon villain. He is so over-the-top disgusting Clarke is experimenting with mockery instead of acting. Furthermore, everyone on Plymouth Island knows everyone else’s business. Mention anything offhand to either the shopkeeper, the bartender, or the deck hand, and then assume the rest of the island is omniscient and knows it too. The island appears to be both that small and an extremely tight-knit community - a challenging environment for one to commit murder.
There is no guessing in Serenity. You cannot deduce where it is going. There may be a sneaky clue dropped here and there, but it will not prepare you for what’s to come. That is a rare event in cinema. The Sixth Sense is one of the few times that's happened, where nothing the director has shown you will lead you to guess the big reveal. However, Serenity will never be compared to The Sixth Sense in any other way. Steven Knight does not prepare the audience for how hard he yanks the rug out from under them. It feels like cheating. Knight spins a decent yarn and sets up a meaty dilemma - to kill the bad guy or not to kill the bad guy. Instead of rolling up his sleeves and doing the due diligence it requires to take that idea to the end, Knight lobs a hand grenade in the tale and tells us to piece it all back together.
Knight is a very prolific and frequently adept filmmaker. He wrote and directed the superb Locke. He probably does not need to work because he was a creator of Who Wants to be a Millionaire? - perhaps the most watched TV show of all time. Speaking of TV, he also wrote the series Taboo and Peaky Blinders. The man is a high-speed, high-output writer. But his directorial effort with Serenity makes me question if Locke was an outlier. He employs loud jump cut edits to use as jump scare transitions. The camera tricks are too cheeky for the material and feel out of place. Yet, to each their own. If you want to play around with the psych thriller genre, have at it - you aren’t the first to do it. But earn the ending. Merely throwing on an explanation, no matter how ridiculous, and calling it a day will ensure everybody at the office warns their co-workers to steer clear of your film instead of encouraging them to run and see it.
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