Review by Robbie Jones
Directed by: Assaf Bernstein
Starring: India Eisley, Jason Isaacs, Mira Sorvino, Penelope Mitchell, John C. MacDonald
It’s far more disappointing to see a film that could be good but doesn’t hit the mark, than to see one that is just flat out bad. Nothing about Look Away screams incompetence but, at the same time, nothing that it attempts to pull off is done with any success.
Look Away is the story of Maria (India Eisley), a troubled young girl alienated by her parents, tormented by her peers and unappreciated by her only friend. One day, Maria sees herself in the mirror; a darker, more confident, more driven version of herself that promises to make things better if she lets her. She agrees, and what follows is a twisted series of events that spin her life upside down.
Look Away is a competent but sadly ineffective horror film; all the credit in the world to Eisley, who carries the film through with an excellent central performance. Playing a dual role, Eisley perfects both sides of the same coin with the shy, awkward, quiet Maria and her vindictive, demented counterpart. Without her, the film becomes a tad lifeless. Jason Isaacs is in the film too – Obligatory “Hello to Jason Isaacs” joke – and he is of course a very talented man, as are pretty much the entire cast, but their talent is wasted on paper thin characters who add very little to the film.
The only technical aspect of the film that could be called bad is the lighting; dark colours may be par for the course as far as horror is concerned, but the lighting of this film is completely uninteresting, often killing any potential excitement. It’s consistently drab, despite some decent cinematography and editing, and good attempts at creating some disturbing imagery along the way.
While the screenplay is perfectly coherent, there’s no real joy found in the revenge aspect of the film, just many uncomfortable moments that come off as awkward rather than disturbing, and a lot of needlessly sexual content including nudity for the sake of nudity that adds nothing to the story. The base story is quite interesting, but the screenplay is just quite bland. It fails to achieve any kind of scares, and feels so oddly paced. Clocking in at an hour and 43 minutes, the point where the film ends barely feels like a film ever took place at all, with the entire thing breezing by and hardly any impact to let you know that you actually just watched a film.
It’s not terribly shot, it’s not terribly edited, it’s not terribly written – it’s just that all of these elements are completely dull, and don’t add up to what was clearly intended to be a chilling horror story. Despite a strong leading performance, Look Away is an unfortunate misstep that comes off as quite forgettable.
Look Away is on Netflix UK now.
"Jasmin Mozaffari’s incendiary coming-of-age story is the best directorial debut of the year."— ๐๐๐๐๐ ๐ง๐๐๐๐๐๐๐๐๐ฃ.๐๐ ๐ ๐ฌ (@themoviewaffler) July 14, 2019
FIRECRACKERS is on VOD now.
Read @filmclubchs's reviewhttps://t.co/iFKHPOpHKv pic.twitter.com/HOI3CcmWig