Serenity Movie Review

Serenity (2019)

Rent Serenity on Amazon Video
Written by: Steven Knight
Directed by: Steven Knight
Starring: Matthew McConaughey, Anne Hathaway, Diane Lane, Jason Clarke, Djimon Hounsou, Jeremy Strong
Rated: R
Watch the trailer

Plot
A fishing boat captain juggles must face his mysterious past while ensnared in a reality where nothing is what it seems.

Verdict
I don't know if this movie is intentionally bad, but the twist sort of explains that away while generating so many more questions that can't be reconciled. The twist is notable, but not because it's effective. This is almost so bad it's good and all because of the twist.
Trying to explain why the characters act as they do feels like giving the movie too much credit. It's purposefully confusing which is off-putting, not intriguing. These actors had to have been duped, and so was I. The trailer looked good, but that was a lie.
Skip it.

Review
Almost from the start we know there is some layering of the story, we just don't know the connection between Baker and this young kid we keep seeing. I guessed the movie could be a dream or a memory, but that's not it.

Baker is the captain of a fishing tour boat with a strange fixation on a tuna fish named Justice. He's barely making ends meet and hunting for the tuna instead of taking customers out fishing doesn't help. The movie doesn't offer much setup. We're thrown information, but have no understanding of how or why we are here.

The movie is confusing just for the sake of forcing a mystery. Much of it doesn't make sense. Why are these character illogical? Why hasn't this movie ended yet?

There's a scene where Baker and this kid are playing with a puddle of water on the table. We know they are connected, but the how is unclear. Is the boy Baker?

The main arc of the plot begins when Baker's ex-wife finds him and asks him to kill her husband. The husband is played up as really vile and evil so we feel no sympathy whatsoever for him.

There's also a running gag of a lawyer type that keeps missing Baker by seconds every few scenes.
Every character is pushing him to save his ex-wife, but how do they even know that arrangement. The whole town is like some kind of collective.

 The twist leaves a big gap. With the twist, the aesthetics of the movie are wrong. This brings into question Baker's sentience. When Baker realizes the twist all of a sudden he's constrained when he wasn't before. It's forced, an easy out to explain why the first half of the movie is bad. To do it right, it needs to satirize the subject it used as a twist.

I reached a point where I didn't know what this movie was. It's too hard to stretch the narrative to fit the twist. I was ready for it to end. The Baker story is a substitution type story for the kid we saw.

This is just awkwardly put together. There's no through line. It's a twist to prop up a rather mundane  thriller, but it's not effective in the least. The phone call towards the end complicates matters all the more. It's like the movie was setup as one part of the plot is happening in a character's head or it's a dream, but they didn't want to reuse that trope so they shoehorned a different twist that didn't really fit and nobody really cared.