REVIEW #88 Chaos Walking (2021)

Chaos Walking is the film adaptation of the book ‘The Knife of Never Letting Go’ and is directed by Doug Liman. This film centres around Todd Hewitt, a young man who discovers a crashed spaceship near his home and soon after finds Viola, the first female he has ever seen. On this planet Todd believes all the women were killed by the alien inhabitants and all the men are effected by ‘the noise’ a projection of inner thoughts which everyone can see. He vows to protect Viola and accompanies her on a dangerous journey. 

CAST & THE ACTING 

Tom Holland and Daisy Ridley lead the cast as Todd and Viola respectively and it’s not the best performance I have seen from either actor. I think the problem was they were let down by the writing and therefore it was hard for the audience to connect to their characters. I think Tom Holland definitely carries the partnership, Todd was far more likeable compared to Ridleys Viola. He does well to portray a more three dimensional character, where the audience wants to find out more about him. The cast as a whole was actually really good, accompanying Tom Holland and Daisy Ridley was Mads Mikkleson as David the Mayor and Nick Jonas who played his son Davy Jnr, who are both really talented actors. No one actually delivered a poor performance, I just believe that they were let down by the films poor writing and flat dialogue. 

PLOT & THE STORYLINE 

Chaos Walking has all the ingredients to be a film I really love, I’m a big fan of the genre and actually thought the concept was really promising! However the execution was not very good at all. I think the main problem with this film is they touched upon so many things but didn’t provide us with the necessary information to follow up those topics. The ‘Spackles’ for example are the native alien inhabitants of this planet, we see them once and they are spoken about briefly a handful of times. This is a hugely important aspect of the film but Chaos Walking just brushes it to the side and doesn’t delve into that at all. We also hear briefly about how humans ended up on this planet and we are told very little detail about the first wave of humans that inhabited it. Again this is such an important element of the film that just isn’t explored enough for the audience to understand. I also feel there was so much more we needed to learn about Todd, his obsession with trying to be a real man and suppress his emotions, where did that stem from? They made a point of emphasising that element of his personality but provided no explanation! I haven’t read the books so perhaps what I’m criticising would have been explored further in future sequels but this first instalment was just wasted in an attempt to set up a franchise. The foundations I did really like and it’s so disappointing because if this film was handled better I have no doubt that future films would have been made but now it looks unlikely. 

CINEMATOGRAPHY & SPECIAL EFFECTS 

I think this was probably where Chaos Walking performed the best, there was some brilliant scenery in this film which created some good visuals. The special effects that were employed looked pretty realistic, granted there wasn’t a lot but what was used, was done well. I liked how they portrayed ‘the noise’ that was an interesting aspect to the film and I think Doug Liman and Ben Seresin the cinematographer approached that nicely. The sound effects that were used to manipulate and distort Tom Holland’s voice for ‘the noise’ fitted perfectly with the concept. The world they are on doesn’t have a night time, so it doesn’t get dark but they utilised the weather as a tool to change the tone and lighting of the scenes, which was clever. So some positive signs in this category.

OVERALL (5.5/10)

I’m really disappointed that this film didn’t live up to expectations, I saw negative reviews but I have liked unpopular films before so I had high hopes. I loved the concept and the cast is great but the execution was terrible. Chaos Walking just tried to fit as much in it as possible, which meant no element of the film was explored enough and that left me with so many questions that needed to be answered. When a film has so many interesting aspects but chooses to solely focus on a manhunt for a women you know something hasn’t gone well! It’s watchable for sure but it needs like 3 or 4 sequels for everything to piece together but that’s never going to happen now that the film has flopped so badly, which is disappointing. 

Thanks for reading.

Callan