Chaos Walking

For any filmmaker contemplating their own YA franchise, Chaos Walking is an instructive anti-manual. For the rest of us, it's just noise.

It lacks heft, or interest. Absolutely bone-numbingly dull and stupid.

This device, of course, worked on paper, in the source novel, The Knife of Never Letting Go, by Patrick Ness. But it's appalling on film.

A semi-competent sci-fi yarn that suffers, if anything, from being too simple in its execution.

Holland and Ridley have all the rapport of two tree trunks, and the deeper dramatic and comedic possibilities of the one-way torrent of intimate thoughts between them goes bafflingly unexplored.

A disappointment. A premise with much promise has been turned into a bland retread through YA's most familiar faults - despite some bold efforts from Holland, Ridley and Mikkelsen.

The whole "men’s thoughts are seen by everyone, but women’s thoughts are not" is depicted in a way that leaves men portrayed as pigs and insinuates women have no brains. One of the worst films of the year.

The most egregious act of this film is to have such an incredible cast entirely underserved by the script.

Chaos Walking is nothing but a stagnant and boring sci-fi adventure film that’s nothing but “exposition” in the not-too-distant future.

What we get is a movie built on a compelling and imaginative premise that realizes much of its potential. At the same time it leaves way too many loose ends, making it feel like a frustrating first installment rather than its own well-rounded movie.