★
While in Rome to shoot his first movie, actor and industrial heir Nick becomes obsessed with a dating app that sends him into a self-destructive spiral
Classification: 15
Jesus Christ, what a mind-numbing, migraine-inducing clusterfuck of boredom, The App is another one of Netflix's hapless voids of monotonous drivel. I'm not even sure what exactly happened as co-writer and director Elisa Fuksas delivers an abominable, frustratingly illogical and stupidly pretentious story that wants to speak to societies obsession with technology and phone apps. As this year's Countdown had already proven, low budget cash-ins about sentient phone apps are hot garbage but Fuksas isn't even able to deliver any amusing camp to her film. Lifeless from beginning to end, The App makes 80 minutes feel like 400 with no reprieve from any element as each new development is both random, unearned and another excuse for you to just give up.
Following the character of Nick Melfi, a rich playboy shooting a movie in which he plays Jesus Christ (as if the film wasn't already pushing its luck in the bullshit arthouse playbook) while away his girlfriend uploads a new dating app on his phone to help her with a market research class. The logic holding together this already collapsed house of cards is flimsy at best and Fuksas has no real bearing on what she wants to say with any of this. The dulcet electronic tones of the soundtrack just send the audience asleep as Nick becomes enamoured with a mysterious voice from the app. The film tries to create drama with Nick's relationships, his stress from making the movie, problems with his family but none of it forms into a coherent narrative and you just lose any interest of making sense of any of it. When the third act twists roll around, you won't be able to make sense of them because your sight will be impaired from rolling your eyes too hard.
Fuksas obviously thinks there's depth to the story; the moody performance from Vincenzo Crea, the neon cinematography, biblical imagery (the shot where Nick is hoisted up on a blue screen crucifix against a green screen made me want to die) but how the audience is supposed to empathize with any of this is a mystery to me. Nothing about The App works, it fails to hook you in, fails to keep you invested and then fails to make any of its story worthwhile or meaningful. I still have a headache from watching this and it's making me mad just thinking about this film because when looking for complaints (which there are many) you are just left with this depressed, pointless feeling. The App doesn't do anything to make itself noteworthy in its terribleness, the moment it's over, it's gone from your brain, you struggle to remember pieces of it almost as if it was playing in the corner of a dream you had two weeks ago and barely remember why you know what it is.
Atrocious and I cannot stress this enough flat out boring, The App just sucks. Terrible in execution on every level, this vapid and tedious expression of mindless commentary has no voice to reckon with. It could almost be considered a feat that a film could be this tiresome but I honestly don't care to write about this anymore. It's pure awful drivel don't watch it; spend time with your loved ones, rewatch The Irishman, become a monk, solve the theorem to create the Flux Capacitor and build a time machine, then go back and stop Netflix from making The App. It's an insult to the senses not worth my bile and not worth yours, let it be cast back into the depths where useless bad films deserve to die and be forgotten.
Director: #ElisaFuksas
Cast: #VincenzoCrea, #JessicaCressy, #GretaScarano
Release Date: December 26th 2019
Trailer:
Written review copyright ©CoreyBullochReviews
Images and Synopsis from Netflix
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