I thought the first fifteen minutes did a pretty good job of selling the idea that the movie was going somewhere. But it wasn't, and later that became very apparent. Also, it really couldn't have gone anywhere, because the early stuff had the atmosphere of a serious buildup, but not the substance. The story-telling logic was not in place, as one buildup scene with no payoff followed another.
Consider the second and third Matrix movies. I like the second one more. In the third movie, the story collapses into incoherence. But, you can't really exonerate the second one, because by the time it finishes there's no logical ending possible, and the third movie has to collapse.
Modern movie audiences are trained to accept that strange things in the first third of the movie will pay off in the end. Sometimes that expectation is without foundation. But it's such a strong expectation that as long as a movie projects a sense that is going somewhere we feel like everything is going well, until the lack of payoff proves that things were never going well.
#BringF4Home
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