★★
Disturbing and mysterious things begin to happen to a bartender in New Orleans after he picks up a phone left behind at his bar.
Classification: 15
Although boasting a talented cast led by Armie Hammer, writer-director Babak Anvari is unable to make anything substantial with this psychological horror. It has its moments with the disturbing imagery involving cockroaches and dark portals, but these attempts of Lovecraftian horror are unable to dig beneath the audience's skin. Following Armie Hammer's Will, a shallow bartender who upon recovering a lost iPhone after a violent bar fight begins to suffer from ominous hallucinations. The college kids who left it appear to have been involved in a ritual that has summoned a creature that is now stalking them and now that Will has seen this through the phone's video, he is now a target too.
Wounds explores Will's relationships with his girlfriend Carrie and his friend Alicia with whom he has sexual feelings for as Will's escalating madness reveals his true nature. Hammer captures the vanity of Will remarkably well, he's not likeable but not cruel, just hollow. For some vapid reason, he believes himself to be great even though he's a college dropout who works in a dive bar. He thinks he's Sam Malone-like character but before images of severed heads and tunnels bombard his sightline the audience can already tell that Will is full of shit. He is a character incapable of genuine love and appears to see his female counterparts as possessions rather than people. He's accusatory towards Dakota Johnson's Carrie and suspects her of cheating, not because he's jealous that their relationship may be in danger but because her attention is towards her college professor rather than him. Stemming towards his distaste for academia, it's obvious he has subconscious insecurities about his own intelligence and feels a need to diminish everyone around him like a thick-headed alpha male. Most obviously in his interactions with Jeffrey, Alicia's boyfriend who Will doesn't believe is real competition when compared to himself so shamelessly flirts with Alicia in front of Jeffrey oblivious to his own hypocrisy.
The exploration of toxic masculinity in Wounds is the most interesting component but Anvari isn't able to have the drama and the horror flow together. Large portions of the film feel unfocused as the creeping unknown just ambles through the narrative, there is no driving force for the audience to latch onto. Will is having visions but Anvari isn't sure what this is leading towards, its an excuse for Hammer to reveal his character's true nature but beyond creeping out the audience there's no real payoff. Will's not an authentic man but the audience can clock that within the first ten minutes, we don't really need hallucinations of cockroaches to confirm this in every scene. The danger then expands onto Carrie as she begins to fall victim to visions of the portals with the haunting image even beginning to possess her. Will blames himself, again making Carrie's issues revolve around him and trying to stave off shame about his flirtations with Alicia by trying to be a heroic boyfriend.
There's something happening with Wounds but it's faint, not enough to make the film overly compelling. Anvari's direction of the film's atmosphere along with Hammer's performance keeps the film just engaging enough to keep paying attention but without a proper conclusion or even satisfying thematic resolution. The film just stops, it doesn't end because right when it begins to get interesting and starts to answer its questions, credits start rolling. Anvari believes this ambiguity is earned but its rather frustrating considering the horror element is the least developed part of Wounds. You're left with an anticlimactic shrug of a film that doesn't up to its potential, the horror of the unknown underutilised and characters impossible to root or care for.
Director: #BabakAnvari
Release Date: October 18th 2019
Available to stream on Netflix
Trailer:
Written review copyright ©CoreyBullochReviews
Images and Synopsis from the Internet Movie Database
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