Review of Kingdom of Us (2017) by Julia W — 21 Oct 2017

The film lacks details necessary to fully understand the family's situation or empathize with the characters. Many aspects of their life seemed to be glossed over. For example, the mother talks about wanting to shield her children more, but no details are given regarding the father's difficult behaviors (besides a couple of superficial references to him being sad when everyone else was happy) and one daughter recounting how he said she looked like a crack whore.

It is not known how often the father displayed these negative behaviors and whether he had schizophrenia or some other mental illness. All of the children went to private school, but I was left wondering how the family had so much money and what the parents did to make a living.

All in all, the film dragged and was actually quite boring; I kept waiting for the big bomb shell, but it never came. Overall, I felt like I was watching the surface of a deep story and the depth that was needed to fully engage with the film and the people profiled was missing.

I didn't get much out of the film and was left with a lot of unanswered questions, which made me feel like I could have spent my time doing something more productive.