Review of Little Joe (2019) by 12Pfundhack — 17 Mar 2022

I liked the photography of the film, although it had some awkward moments when the camera pushed in and you'd only see the tips of the noses for a while. Also the science is surprisingly sound (with exceptions of course), the whole premise of producing an oxytocin precursor in a plant is actually technically feasible. Unfortunately, this is where the good stuff ends.

The plot is incredibly slow and leads nowhere. The side-effects of the horror plant are barely noticeable and most of the drama comes from the main character being a poorly performing mother. In the end, I turned the playback speed to 1.5x just to make it through and it still felt like it took too long. The story would fit in a 30 min youtube short but was padded with 2 hours of unnecessary runtime. It's not even mysterious or asking exciting questions – it's just boring.