Pose (film): A decent idea ruined by substandard cast, story, and long runtime

I've been a big fan of James McAvoy for a while. I think he is wonderful actor with a great range and even though he may not pop immediately into mind, I think he is one of the best actors in his age range (he's 46). This movie was something I was really looking forward to because I like the notion of the "thriller" category of films and I really like him. Unfortunately this film is just not very good and the thriller aspects of it are more supernatural than awe-inspiring and when the film reaches its eventual conclusion we aren't so much shocked as we are "thank goodness that is finally over."

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The story here is that James plays Thomas Alexander, who is a very highly regarded photographer that is admired by all up and coming talents in the photography world. He is not an easy person to contact and prefers to stay out of the public eye despite the fact that he is one of the most celebrated photographers in the world. Out of nowhere he accidentally gives the "golden" ticket to a couple who AirBnBs his sprawling expanse of a mansion (because photographers definitely make that sort of money) and they just happen to be photographers as well.

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We are introduced to the characters in a sort of ominous sort of way and for the first 10 minutes or so this is quite interesting and different than you would normally see in a film. In many ways I was getting some vibes from McAvoy of his wonderful portrayal of "Paddy" from Speak No Evil which was a remake of a far better film called "Gæsterne" that was a Dutch and Danish collaboration. I was wondering why he kind of seemed to be playing the same role but then when looking at the film notes I discovered that the script was open-ended and that a lot of the dialogue and even entire scenes were ad-libbed by the actors.

This kind of seemed a bit like this was the case now that I am looking back because during the scenes the conversation seems excruciatingly long with the actors and actresses occasionally and presumably accidentally, interrupting one another and then they would just stop talking like would be the case in a normal real-life conversation.

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In one scene McAvoy is being intimidating and the next he is being genuinely helpful and this was very confusing to me. Is he good or evil? I guess this ambiguity was perhaps the intention of the director and producers but honestly the end result is we don't really understand what the point of any of this is. What are we aiming for here? What is the objective? What is the motivation of anyone that is in any scene. There are some love trysts as well and a lot of that seems forced as well. I don't really know how to describe it other than just disjointed and weird.

Another thing that happens in the film that was likely experimental was that the camera is constantly shaking as if whoever was behind the camera didn't really know what was going to happen next either and someone (mostly James) will all of a sudden just get up and move to another part of the room or house in what doesn't appear to be a planned thing at all. It kind of reminded me of the sort of crap that we would do in Drama Club when the teacher didn't really have a plan for the day or was hungover.

This sums it up pretty well.

There aren't even very many images of this film available online at all because honestly, nothing really happens until the end and when it does it comes out of nowhere and has absolutely nothing to do with the rest of the film.

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The inappropriate flirting that Thomas Alexander sounds like something that a child would say when trying to flirt with other 8th graders such as "your hair is beautiful, I'd love to take a picture of that" (actual line from the film) and there are other instances that are probably meant to be artsy and experimental but are just really silly such as "I want to take a photo that the world cannot take away from me."

To make matters worse one of the main characters "Peter" is played by a French actor who speaks with a barely understandable accent the entire film - and always in English. This force me to turn the volume up to maximum just to understand what the hell he is mumbling.

The trailer gives the impression that this is some sort of James forcing his will upon hapless visitors which is quite similar to several other films he has starred in and if they had actually done that, this movie might have been decent. The trailer is MUCH better than the actual film - which unfortunately is often the case these days.

Should I watch it?

I can honestly think of absolutely zero reason why anyone should watch this unless they are a film student who is trying to learn how to completely waste $10 million on some artsy crap that virtually no one is capable of enjoying. This isn't even a good hate-watch film because you don't have to look very far to find just truly awful aspects of this film. Bad shooting, bad lighting, bizarre scenes with clearly made-up-on-the-spot dialogue and an ending that has nothing to do with the rest of the film results in something so awe-inspiringly awful that I can't believe they bothered to release it.

_{do not get this film confused with the relatively high-rated series with the same name. I know nothing about that series. Pose can be watched at a number of places such as Amazon Prime and AppleTV+. I highly recommend you not do so though}