Thursday, December 24, 2020

Unintended: a coming of age "almost murder" mystery

Greetings, commies!

You know that feeling following the thump-crunch under your wheels? You know it's a squirrel. Its flattened corpse will haunt you on your drive home from work. Now imagine accidentally killing something human size? Now you can imagine how Lea felt when she killed her neighbor in Unintended. I must say, I really wanted to like that movie - if only it could figure out what genre it belonged to. 

My thoughts:

"Unintended" is basically an embryo that doesn't know what it wants to be when it develops. I am all for cross-genre movie, but this one can't decide if it's a thriller or a heart-warming, tear-jerking coming of age slice of Americana. It starts lowkey but sinister, and then just devolves into sappy. Too many images of Lea having an exaggerated panic attack. Too many pill-popping, hair-pulling scenes that do not add to the story. Not to mention, it's totally implausible from the criminal justice standpoint. No way can you just walk away from a potential manslaughter without the police involved. People don't just disappear into thin air without the authorities raising some questions. I can see someone hiding the impulsive murder of a newborn, but not a fully grown teenager that everyone knew in that community.

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