Review of I'm Thinking of Ending Things (2020) by Eldoreth — 12 Sep 2020

After watching this film, I was rather confused and wanted to solve the mystery. But there weren't enough numbers in the Sudoko puzzle to make much sense of it. I went online and someone there had posted something that made sense of the film and it clicked. As I've grown I've found myself less and less enthused about vagueness and abstraction. I've started to prefer straightfowardness and truthful approximation. I just think if you have something to say, then say it, damnit. The movie would have hit a lot harder had I know what exactly it was trying to say rather than trying to be "smart" and mysterious.

This movie needed a sympathetic protagonist. It needed to be his voice we heard first, so that we would know he is the central character. By the end we would need to know what is happening and we would empathize with the central character which would produce a cathartic response. We got this in Eternal Sunshine. We could have gotten this in this film too.

I also wonder why the film kept cutting away from Plemmons at the last scene, even cutting away strangely in the middle of a climax in the scene, forcing us to look from afar rather than see the emotion on his face. This repeated cutting close and far was stupid. No other explanation. It was jarring and stupid.