Review of Apostle (2018) by Jluis_001 — 14 Oct 2018

In every sense interesting but failed in execution. Apostle had the weapons to become an extraordinary horror film but settled for the basics.

The biggest problems are its narrative, the slowness of it and how much of its excessive duration leaves aside what is the most important element of the plot.

It seems incredible to me that the film opens the first 25 minutes with a mystery that looks impressive and then gets lost for almost an hour in fairly trivial elements.

The only thing we know about the protagonist is his lack of faith because of the torture he received while spreading his religion. Beyond that we never go deep into it and when you have a film with 130 minutes of lenght and you don't develop more your characters, then that's problematic and when the story that should advance gets relegated until the final part, well I've gotta say Apostle becomes a slow-burner that abuses too much of its potential.

It definitely has things that redeem it. The film looks spectacular, the cinematography is excellent as well as the staging and the music. From its cast we have the always reliable Michael Sheen who makes a character that dominates the screen at every moment. The protagonist Dan Stevens doesn't do anything memorable but his work is solid. Perhaps the weakest link is Lucy Boynton who never feels in sync. I applaud also that the director stayed away from the frontal horror approach, yet more agility in that area would have helped him a lot to the rhythm of the film.

People where expecting a lot from Gareth Evans after his praised films The Raid 1 and 2 and although I must say that I'm not disappointed, the film was far from my expectations but it's still a good film and iit's another solid addition to Netflix's catalog who apparently were keeping the strong titles for the end of the year.