Wounds ★★★☆☆ | Movie Review

Synopsis 

Disturbing and mysterious things begin to happen to a bartender in New Orleans after he picks up a phone left behind at his bar.

Written and directed by Babak Anvari.
Starring Armie Hammer, Zazie Beetz and Dakota Johnson.
Release 18th October 2019, Netflix.

Review 

With such a heavy set of films at the London Film Festival Wounds was a relatively "light" option. It's not for the faint-hearted though and if you have a phobia of creepy crawlies then you might want to give it a pass.

Will's life isn't that complicated, he does his shifts at the bar, comes home to his girlfriend Carrie and in between he flirts with one of the regulars, Alicia.

Life in the bar is pretty predictable, everyone drinks too much and there's the occasional fight. On this particular evening things get even stranger. When Eric and his friends arrive already drunk Will leaves them be, he's more intrigued by the group of college kids who arrive looking quite out of place. Everything is turned upside down when Eric and his friends start fighting and bring the night to a quick end.

Clearing up the debris Will finds a phone belonging to one of the kids, he takes it home intending to put it in lost property the next day but before that happens he discovers some shocking images that lead him and Carrie down a terrifying rabbit hole.

Wounds has a nice idea behind it but once I came out of the film and started thinking about it I began realising that somehow it's all just a little vague. One of the things I like about films with sci-fi and supernatural leanings is finding out about where the "things" have come from, in Wounds they give you a hint about it but nothing solid to go on. Will and Carrie are only given the vaguest of clues about what is happening and it's surprisingly frustrating. It felt very much like we'd been handed film two in a series and somewhere along the line we'd be handed the first film as a prequel and watch it end as they drop the phone in the bar.

We're also probably subjected to a little too much drama. The beginning takes a while to get to the horror aspect of things. By the time it came out I was genuinely surprised. I'd assumed the horror tag was added at a stretch as it was coming across as a thriller more than everything else. Certainly the drama portion seemed to be unnecessary to most of what was going on by the end of the film.

Armie Hammer plays Will in the main role of the movie. Will's journey goes through a lot of stages, potentially too many. It does at least work in a sensible progression rather than jumping around. Hammer is convincing in all stages even if they do seem a little far fetched but I would personally have axed some of it.

Here's what I would have done... Zazie Beetz was great and I love her in everything I've seen, in my opinion she was underused in this film. I'd have given her the role of Carrie and expanded it slightly while cutting Alicia and her boyfriend out completely. Beetz's performance was great but there wasn't really anything to get her teeth into when it came to the horror side of everything. She had great chemistry with Hammer onscreen which I didn't get from his performances with Johnson. Johnson's performance in general felt underwhelming, Carrie wasn't going to be a likeable character but she could have been so much more.

Sound plays a very big part in the film. As I mentioned at the beginning creepy crawlies play a big part in Wounds, and even when they're not there you know they're there. It's incredibly well done because more than once I found myself getting twitchy that I could hear them in the background of scenes. The other noticeable sound related issue was around the phone, at one point Will answers the mobile and we're subjected to a loud piercing tone that cuts right through you. Again, fantastic use of sound, but in this instance while it makes you feel the unease of Will as it happens it is also painfully loud for anyone who is even slightly sensitive to things like that.

The film uses effects to create the swarms of bugs... although saying that, if they didn't then it's a very impressive bunch of cockroach wranglers they have on staff. The effects themselves aren't fantastic but when they happen it's so fast that it kind of works in the moment.

It might not be the best horror film but it certainly wasn't a bad watch. It comes out on Netflix tomorrow, I won't be seeing it again right away but it's definitely going onto the Watchlist for the future.

What you should do 

As I said, if you've got an aversion to creepy crawlies then this is a definite no. If you can stomach the sight of a flock of them and the noise then it's not the worst film to sit through, and as it's Netflix you can definitely recover an evening's viewing with something else if Wounds isn't to your liking.

Movie thing you wish you could take home 

Armie Hammer, pre-weirdness. I'm sorry but if he asked me to cheat on you... I would.