Review of Chaos Walking (2021) by Darkogav — 29 Apr 2022

Director Doug Liman’s latest film is an escapade into the realm of the highly popular teenage sci-fi gender, an adaption of Patrick Ness’ book series Chaos Walking (2021). The film stars Daisey Ridley (Rey of recent Star Wars franchise fame), and Mads Mikkelsen in a juicy bad guy role.

The entire film seems to be a grand ‘ole trek into an alien planet that oddly seems to resemble the forests of the American Northwest (before all the forest fires devoured the landscape). This alien planet is populated by settles, cowboys and aliens (well, it’s actually one alien and the spectator is briefly treated to a glimpse of an alien village in the distance for a few seconds) who are battling it out for existence on this Earth like planet.

The film is beautiful to watch and the acting is superb, but it falls short in the category of plot and story. It is not quite clear or logical why these settles are so dead set against each other. The planet seems to have an otherworldly affect on humans in that it changes males so that their thoughts are constantly floating around their heads and open to interpretation by anyone who is within close vicinity; but for some unexplainable reason, females are not affected by the planetary phenomenon.

And for some further strange reason, this phenomenon is what caused the males of one community to murder all the females. This feel that one has to read the book in order to properly understand the plot of this film.

Overall great acting by Ridley and the other actors and the film is well paced and flows smoothly, apart from the confusing story line.