Review of IO (2019) by Viniciusbrito — 23 Jan 2019

In a future world the level of pullution got so high, the oxygen got contaminated making it impossible to breathe and killing many people, apparently. The girl Sam,  survived living in a place where the contamination didn't reach, and from there she tries to find some biological and chemical solution from what is going on. Directed by Jonathan Helpert and written by Clay Jeter, Charles Spano and Will Basanta.

I like this kind of movie, a movie where there isn't action, there isn't epic events or not necessary many characters or places, but for this kind of film to work and actually be good, it would need to fill a few requirements, not all of them, but a few, these requirements, I believe, would be at least:

Good Dialogues, wich isn't present here, there are so many whatever conversations in this film, somethings that don't made me think or got invested in the situation, the dialogues most of the time are just saying what you already know or things that you won't quite care, saying math formulas and stuff like that in different moments, the dialogues should make you think and absorb something, help into making you care or reflect about something, wich lead us to another thing required.

Questionate something that is not usually thought by society in general and is an active thing in the same, wich this movie does try to do, it definely does, but it is so basic and badly done, they do talk about loneliness, but is so superficial, the character is alone for a long time and she doens't seem to have any different aspect from other people, she seems normal, if the movie keeps saying that people are meant to interact and there is one character that doesn't interact with anyone personally in a long time and feels normal, the script is sabotaging itself.

A good narrative, this is always important to keep the audience invested in what is going on with that world, even more in a movie that doesn't happen many things, the narrative in this film it starts well, until some moment are actually things going on and they are introducing what is going on and how that affects the places to us, wich worked, the vegetation getting in the city, the purple fire indicating a polluted air, we got to know that the character is trying to find a cure or something like that, until some point it does work, but after it just stops and most of the film there isn't anything going on anymore wich completely took me off.

There are some other good things, there are some pretty shots, the whole concept at the beginning is good and interesting, the acting is quite fine in some moments, Anthony Mackie did a really nice job, with frustration and hope, angry in some moments as well, Margaret Qualley is fine, in a lot of moments she is apathetic, in others she can be interesting, but not a big deal. The ending of this film is good, it made me think a bit, not about life, but still, getting together somethings from sooner in the story it can have some different possibilities of interpretation in that ending, wich is always good.

The problem with this film is not that this is boring or that it have few characters and few places with an strange ending, the big flaw with this movie is that it doesn't delivers anything, it poorly try to make the audience to reflect about life or changing, but the way that they do it is so bad with such whatever dialogues, dialogues that don't go any deep, is so simple, but at the same time pretending to be something giant.