Contains Spoilers!!! The short version: Poorly written, poorly performed.
I would like to say this movie is horrible. But it's not the kind of horrible where you get up thinking "well, they tried really hard to write a good script, just too ambitious." It's the kind of horrible where you think "man, they really weren't trying."
Tilda Swinton is poorly cast and not convincing at all as the mother. The film seems to need to overstate things to the audience, such as when Swinton disposes of the body in broad daylight, the screenplay felt the need to show a helicopter-shot panoramic view of the area, to quell the "yeah, right, like she could do that in broad daylight" feelings you're having. The film also insults your intelligence in other ways, such as dressing Swinton in black and handing her a cigarette in the scene where you find out her sinister intentions. The story is decent, but it seems like the cinematic devices used in the screenplay are straight out of the 1930's.
The characters in the film behave in excessively stupid ways. For example, why did she wait until the morning to dispose of the body? Why did she not question her son about the incident before disturbing the crime scene? Police are a non-factor, in fact no authority speaks to a member of the cast until 3/4 of the way through, when the sheriff's officer asks Swinton about the anchor. She says their boat doesn't have an anchor, and he simply accepts it and the police never enter the plot again; apparently not having looked around the houses at the lake at all to discover the broken board, as well as the blood the body would have certainly left in the boat.
Earlier in the film, after Swinton drives the dead man's Corvette to another location, (how did the keyless entry still work after the car keys had been submerged for some length of time?), she wipes the steering wheel 'clean' of her prints - neglecting other obvious places like the door handle, the shifter, the radio buttons which she adjusts, and other things she would have certainly touched on the interior of the vehicle.
These are just a few examples; there aren't really any gaping holes in the plot, just a small number of examples where the characters behaved in excessively careless or irrational ways, but frequently enough to interrupt your acceptance of the rest of the plot. The story itself is not awful, the acting is serviceable but not at all above average, but the script sank this one from the beginning.
I would like to say this movie is horrible. But it's not the kind of horrible where you get up thinking "well, they tried really hard to write a good script, just too ambitious." It's the kind of horrible where you think "man, they really weren't trying."
Tilda Swinton is poorly cast and not convincing at all as the mother. The film seems to need to overstate things to the audience, such as when Swinton disposes of the body in broad daylight, the screenplay felt the need to show a helicopter-shot panoramic view of the area, to quell the "yeah, right, like she could do that in broad daylight" feelings you're having. The film also insults your intelligence in other ways, such as dressing Swinton in black and handing her a cigarette in the scene where you find out her sinister intentions. The story is decent, but it seems like the cinematic devices used in the screenplay are straight out of the 1930's.
The characters in the film behave in excessively stupid ways. For example, why did she wait until the morning to dispose of the body? Why did she not question her son about the incident before disturbing the crime scene? Police are a non-factor, in fact no authority speaks to a member of the cast until 3/4 of the way through, when the sheriff's officer asks Swinton about the anchor. She says their boat doesn't have an anchor, and he simply accepts it and the police never enter the plot again; apparently not having looked around the houses at the lake at all to discover the broken board, as well as the blood the body would have certainly left in the boat.
Earlier in the film, after Swinton drives the dead man's Corvette to another location, (how did the keyless entry still work after the car keys had been submerged for some length of time?), she wipes the steering wheel 'clean' of her prints - neglecting other obvious places like the door handle, the shifter, the radio buttons which she adjusts, and other things she would have certainly touched on the interior of the vehicle.
These are just a few examples; there aren't really any gaping holes in the plot, just a small number of examples where the characters behaved in excessively careless or irrational ways, but frequently enough to interrupt your acceptance of the rest of the plot. The story itself is not awful, the acting is serviceable but not at all above average, but the script sank this one from the beginning.