FilmSnobReviews

Title: Significant Other
MPAA Rating: R
Director: Dan Berk, Robert Olsen
Starring: Maika Monroe, Jake Lacy, Matthew Yang King, Dana Green
Runtime: 1 hr 24 mins

What It Is: A couple named Ruth (Monroe) and Harry (Lacy) set out on a camping trip in the woods. Ruth is hesitant, a feeling in her gut following her around as she struggles with her anxiety, missing the ocean as something tells her it’s going to be more than some ordinary backpacking trip. Harry intends on proposing, and she refuses. Meanwhile, a malevolent presence follows them, looking to score its next victims in order to carry on a vicious cycle.

What We Think: UGHHH. Y’know, this is a great time to learn a lesson. Originally attracted to the film due to the hype on Tiktok and the appreciation we have for the two main leads, I was actually looking forward to this film. Boy, do I feel stupid for leaning into movietok, as most of the time people’s Tiktoks rely on recent releases and redundant opinions and statements. The film community on Tiktok often doesn’t even scratch the surface of whatever it is they’re talking about (often do I see horror lists, you can imagine how many times Ari Aster appears on those–I love Hereditary but it’s not the only extremely scary movie that’s ever existed). That being said, whoever enjoys this movie, no offense to you, but you have the tastes of a middle-aged Hulu mom who’s regular watching is 90 Day Fiánce, cake competition shows, and true crime. This is Annihilation for the creatively bankrupt: I am not f*cking joking. I don’t know how in the hell this was green lit without the realization of how awkwardly similar it is to Annihilation with nothing to really discern or redeem itself in a new or unique way. Annihilation is a film that I respect for its warped horror, design, soundtrack, themes, and overall artistry. This is a poor, derivative rendition attempting at the same sort of emotional potency, but comes nowhere close and just feels contrived and plastic. Not to mention it’s a waste of such great talents, while Maika tries to pull it together with her notorious range, the material just can’t stretch far enough to give any dimension to its characters. Jake Lacy unfortunately has the worst of it, with a white-bread, boring, vanilla-guy character with nothing to offer but surface-level plot points and the blandest dialogue ever. Whatever direction was given to him worked against his and the script’s favor, and left the character and his dynamics flatter then paper. The dialogue is cheesy, the characters are plain and boring. I tried my hardest to care, but the horror elements were so awful they couldn’t even be laughable (except for one moment, where they transitioned a scene using a crow sound, and it was just so goofy that it left me and Landon cackling). They literally give everything away in the first scene, and you realize it’s like, aliens… a computer-generated alien. A badly computer-generated alien with a weirdly pompous, pretentious attitude that made it a grating, cliché and unwatchable villain. The plot is predictable and dry, and just strangely felt like they were really trying to cash it in with whoever still hasn’t seen Annihilation?

Light spoiler: but it’s an alien that possesses stuff and takes over their identity, while mutating and merging with them and picking up parts of their personalities. It lands in a forest and begins taking it over creature by creature. The heart of the film is a couple and their strained relationship. HOW IS THAT NOT THE SPARK-NOTES OF ANNIHILATION?

Anyway, this has to go down as one of the worst, most unsatisfying movies I’ve seen all year.

 Our Grade: F, Please, for the love of God, don’t watch this terrible movie. Watch Annihilation, or Under the Skin, or Invasion of the Body Snatchers. There are SO many other amazing movies about aliens, or relationships, or anxiety that far triumph over this film. I couldn’t find anything redeeming about this movie, I hate that it failed so terribly thematically with all the resources it had going for it. I hope the filmmakers are able to do something far more original with a much better script moving forward, because I deeply regret having sacrificed an hour of my time to this stinky, unsurprising piece of wet garbage.