Tuesday, July 26, 2011

Quick Look: TRUST

If Trust is not the worst movie of the year so far, and it’s not, it’s certainly one of the queasiest. I could imagine a good version of a movie about a young teen girl seduced by an online stranger who then rapes her and throws her, and her family’s, life into emotional overdrive. This is not that movie. Not at all. It’s a sick vortex of awful hysterics and kids-these-days grumbling that plays as overblown and, worse, fake. It even sucks in usually dependable actors like Clive Owen, Catherine Keener, and Viola Davis. Young Liana Liberato, as the victim, is quite good as well, but the film isn't up to the level of the cast. I’m not expecting a movie like this to have easy resolution, or resolution at all for that matter, but I wish director David Schwimmer and writers Andy Bellin and Robert Festinger could have had something of interest to add to a timely discussion. Instead, they have this manipulative, pat tripe masquerading as a Very Serious Statement. It’s clunky, formulaic, and uses online culture as nothing more than an overwhelming source of paranoia. What a slimy well-meaning picture. Here’s a review in two onomatopoeias: Yuck and Ugh.  It’s so purposelessly cruel to its characters and its audience that the name of the girl’s school, New Trier High School, is an unfortunate coincidence.

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