1BR

If you look up “fast food secret menus”, you’ll find all sorts of wacky ideas for combining food items into new food Frankenstein creations that would make most cardiologists die of fright. One particular theme is combining several items into one big monstrosity that covers all the bases, like Arby’s “meat mountain” sandwich, which puts roast beef, chicken fingers, turkey, brisket, and virtually every other kind of meat on a bun to make a foot-tall monstrosity. These are fun ideas in concept, but in reality, we know that these things are better as their individual components than combined. 1BR is meat mountain: it has all these cool components that, when assembled, aren’t as enjoyable as the individual parts, or as enjoyable as you’d think they would be together. There is so much to like about this movie. I the concept: a young woman trying to leave behind a troubled past moves into an apartment complex, and it turns out they’re a cult. The directing and camerawork manage to evoke this wonderful sense of community when it’s called for, and oppressive claustrophobia when that’s needed to, all while doing essentially the same shots. I love that the movie doesn’t waste time; there’s a version of this movie in an alternate universe where the build-up is 2/3’s or even 3/4’s of the runtime. Not here. 20 minutes in, and shit hits the fan. I love that the protagonist Sarah is desperate to escape the trauma of her past, and how it infects every action she takes in the movie, up to trying to embrace the conditioning. I love that the cult isn’t overtly religious, but instead what happens when the “it takes a village” mindset is weaponized to a psychotic and dogmatic degree; it’s the power of positive thinking turned negative. But when you combine it all together, the lines don’t match up. The movie wants you to buy into this friendship she has with a coworker, but it feels like they’ve only know each other a couple days. The trauma Sarah experienced is built up as something terrible, something she’s fleeing across the country from, and while it sucks, it doesn’t feel like it fits her level of pain. The conditioning and assimilation has to be shown, as it’s central to her character arc, but it feels protracted and tedious … which is the point of torture, but why do WE need to feel it? Sarah is weak and scarred and has a hard time standing on her own feet, which makes sense and works within the narrative of her trying to embrace the conditioning because it’ll give her what she wants … except it’s NOT what she wants (she wants to stand on her own), and it’s never quite convincing that she’s even trying to accept the conditioning. And the climax feels like the movie checked its watch, saw it was almost over, and wrapped up everything in a hurry. I feel like 5-10 minutes of the middle section needed to be given to the climax, but I don’t know HOW, because they couldn’t have Sarah become Sarah Conner, and doing something after where the movie naturally ends would’ve felt tacked on. But something is missing in the finale. All this leaves me unsure of the movie. I didn’t hate it. I don’t think it’s unwatchable. I think the elements that are well done are VERY well done. I’d recommend watching it and judging for yourself. But for me, it feels like the movie was constantly fighting itself to a draw. It has all the pieces of something good, but I’m not convinced they’re assembled properly. Or if they should be together at all. Hooptober 2022 movie #10/31