Cory Finley is a pretty interesting filmmaker as his works on Thoroughbreds and Bad Education are pretty great as they provide some strong direction and interesting narrative concepts throughout. This movie is based on a novel and I haven't read the novel yet so I primary am focused on the movie as a movie. While this movie does struggle with some of it's narrative themes and concepts, I still throughly enjoyed the movie and it being ambitious.
There were some pretty good camerawork and production that helps establish the environment and setting of the mix sci-fi and naturalistic vibe to the story. The direction from Finley is strong which Finley doing a solid job on maintaining the movie's structural themes and elements. Regarding the narrative, the narrative explores new concepts and social commentaries which I appreciate as the movie does explore some interesting style and ways on presenting the social themes. However, with that being said, the narrative does struggle to balance its structure, themes and tone at times since it does feel slightly convoluted and sloppy on certain aspects. As if the narrative wasn't able to focus on what it really wanted to focus at times.
The performances from the cast members are pretty good as the Asante Blackk and Kylie Rogers provided some pretty good chemistry between one another and were fun to observe. Usually I'm not the biggest fan of Tiffany Haddish but she is pretty good in this movie and it's nice to see her branch out towards dramatic works. On characters, the characters could have been fleshed out a little more. I enjoy some moments from the characters but the character arches felt a little thin which made sometimes a little difficult to fully connect with them. There were a few characters that got a little on my nerves especially the character of Hunter.
The dialogue moments were pretty good as the dialogue helps capture some awkward teenage moments, strange commentary discussions and feel to it. The sci-fi alien like soundtrack was pretty good, the alien designs were pretty cute and the way they are created and structured is pretty cool. The satirical aspects of the movie are solid while there are some satirical moments that aren't strong/
Despite its flaws, I was still invested and interested to see where the film could lead towards and overall, it's not perfect and not for everyone but I appreciate the film's weirdness and creative structures.
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