This is a film that was a long time in the making, with reports suggesting that the director, Jonathan Glazer, has been working on it for more than 10 years. Numerous scripts re-writes and casting changes have been made during that time. It is odd, therefore, that the film feels completely under-cooked, more like a student film maker trying to stretch out short film to feature length than the work of an experienced film maker. Scarlett Johansson plays Laura, an alien, roaming the streets of Glasgow in her van, seeking out the young men that she needs to survive.
With the help of her motorcycle riding minders, she lures the unsuspecting guys to their doom in what seems like an unpleasant but not wholly explained way. After the third of fourth such encounter the film was becoming extremely repetitive and aimless and I was yearning for an expansion to the story. However, when that did happen as Laura starts changing her habits and embarks on a longer relationship with a man she meets on a bus, the film did not become any more interesting and a lot more incoherent.
The plot holes start to become annoying. We see a scene where Laura is unable to eat a piece of chocolate cake, presumably because she does not have a human digestive system, but then a few minutes later she has supper with her new companion. There are other scenes that seem to be meaningless in the context of the film – a break in of a car by one of Laura’s minders and one of her victims seen wandering naked in a field for example – but they may because of my lack of interest or concentration by that point!
On the plus side, Johansson is well cast as the seductive but remote alien, and the woozy score by Mica Levi fits the mood of the film perfectly, but otherwise I found this deeply unsatisfying.
Rating: 3 out of 10