This is one strange movie. Directed by David Cronenberg, known for movies like The Fly, eXistenZ and A History of Violence, nobody should expect mellow entertainment. In this movie “Agatha” (Mia Wasilowska) leaves (escapes?) from some sort of institution in Florida with cash in pocket, heading for Los Angeles where her estranged family lives. Agatha travels with a bag full of psych meds and apparently was institutionalized after burning down the family home, leaving herself badly scarred. Her parents, who married and had kids not knowing that they were brother and sister, have another son who is a rising teen actor/celebrity/asshole Benjie (Evan Bird), with a seriously egocentric attitude. Father (John Cuzak) is a new age TV prosperity teacher and his wife Christina (Olivia Williams) is a neurotic, well off celebrity mother/helicopter parent.
Meanwhile, elsewhere in LaLa Land, Havana Segrand (Juliane Moore) is an actress struggling with middle age career woes, unsatisfying threesomes and neuroses, partaking in every new age beauty treatment imaginable. She needs a personal assistant/sycophant and Agatha arrives at the door just in time. Agatha has also found a sex parter (boyfriend?) in the form of Jerome (Robert Pattinson). As if all this isn’t enough there apparently are ghosts, one of which is busy haunting Benjie. What comes out of this toxic mix? Well, not surprisingly, distress, more neuroses and ultimately death. You’re never sure in this move. What with all of these psychos, who are only marginally connected to reality, you’re never sure which parts of this are hallucinations or possibly actually ghostly visits and just WHAT is Agatha? Evil fiend, psychological victim or both? I don’t know. The end of all this is as strange as the rest of the movie, and includes flaming bodies (real? who knows?) and yet another strange union.
What did I think of this? I just don’t know. It’s confusing, strange and full of psychoneuroses. The plot is loose and events are uncertain, the conclusion strange. Is it a horror movie, a psychological thriller, a noir film, a very, very dark comedy about self-absorbed, narcissistic Hollywood people, a latter day Sunset Boulevard? This movie is drenched in the most decadent part of the Hollywood movie culture and all its self-absorbed dysfunction. The acting is pretty decent, and FX minimal, being mainly a human drama. I think it was an interesting movie, but only recommendable to those who like dysfunction. If you have a bad attitude about entertainers, it might be YOUR movie. I don’t think it’s mine, but I’m also not sorry that I saw it. It would rate lower if it were not so well directed and acted (it goes up one star for that), but it’s not for everybody.
