Hostile is a 2017 post apocalyptic movie about a woman trying to survive a deserted world that seems to be overrun by bloodthirsty creatures. It was directed by Mathieu Turi, starring Brittany Ashworth as Juliette and Gregory Fitoussi as her love interest Jack. Hostile (2017) movie review
Hostile is a movie with very little originality. You have a post-apocalyptic world where people are struggling to survive (we only see one other person interacting on screen with the main character) and you have creatures who are out there hunting humans. Btw, we only see one but hear multiple). That is a good set up for something that could have been taken in a ton of directions. Movie plays it safe and has one character struggling to survive the night by making a lot of stupid decisions. From making noise, to yelling, to throwing out her radio, to acting tough even though she is not. She appeared scared but made a lot of threats to people on the radio. There are way too many cliches thrown about that it appeared that the movie had no original thought.
The creature, not creatures, looks freaky and skeletal in appearance. We don’t get to find out much about it, but if you are a regular movie fan, you will see the ending coming a mile away. It doesn’t get more cliche than that. Also, the ending overall is depressing as hell. I will give a point to the director for going in a different direction than I anticipated. The problem is that this one point is not enough for me to recommend the movie. It is not an original ending, just a tad bit ballsy than what most people expect.
In terms of acting, Brittany Ashworth delivers all her lines in a flat unconvincing tone that I would consider to be about two steps away from an 80s exploitation movie. She is not bad but there was no emotion in her delivery. On the other hand, Grégory Fitoussi who plays Jack has a better delivery timing with all his lines being expressed in a gruff voice. He does seem to have this savior complex brought on by his lavish lifestyle. We have seen it before so I’ll give it a pass. I just don’t see what he saw in Juliet as she is relatively average looking with no interesting characteristics. Drug user does not count as “interesting”. Their romance was not believable so it all falls apart when they focus on it.
The cinematography is great and the lighting is pretty good. The sound editing and overall pace are good, but the movie can feel like it drags way too much at certain points. The whole going back and forth between Jack and Juliet’s relationship and Juliet being alone in the car thing was annoying because at times it kept switching back and forth every min or so which was distracting. There are also many scenes where Juliet is not doing anything in the car. It switches to her past where she is also not doing or talking about anything remotely interesting. This made many scenes feel pointless. If you have one character being the focus of the majority of the movie and she is boring, you have an audience that is also disinterested and checked out.
Overall a cliche movie with not much new to offer. The creature (played by Javier Botet) looked great and is the best thing about the movie. Everything else is tired and repetitive fr an avid movie goer. There was not a lot of action, just scenes of a lot of growling but not much else. We don’t get a lot on the creatures, just some news exposition. We don’t know much about them either besides their weakness.
However, the movie doesn’t appear low budget and has some tense scenes that help it stand out just a tiny bit in a sea of post apocalyptic films. The movie feels like it was rushed and quite a few things about the apocalypse were not explained well. It will leave the movie watcher asking way too many questions about the origin of the creatures and how long it has passed since everything went to hell. To me it was distracting, but to others it will feel like it doesn’t matter.
Thanks for reading my Hostile (2017) movie review
