griggs79

0/10

_Evolution_ left me weirdly hooked and a bit confused. It’s a slow, creepy watch—really striking to look at, but it keeps things pretty vague. I liked the eerie vibe and all the strange, squirmy moments, though it did get a bit frustrating. Classic Hadžihalilović—answers not included.

CinemaSerf

0/10

Perhaps it's because I watched this when it is -4 outside, but this is quite a chillingly haunting film that is probably most notable for the powerful efforts of the eleven year old Max Brebant as "Nicolas" and the very intangibility of just where and when this is all set. Ostensibly, he's living in a small village populated by women and young lads like himself. There are no grown-up men anywhere to be seen. When he goes swimming one afternoon he makes quite a startling discovery and it's his disclosure of that to his mother (Julie-Marie Parmentier) and her reaction that starts to stimulate interest from the audience in just what is going on in this peaceable, rather regimented, place. "Nicolas" is determined to get to the bottom of his new found mystery and as he explores he finds things his young brain struggles to rationalise (as did mine). Things become more curious when he is admitted to an hospital where the most peculiar medical procedures are carried out on him and on his friend "Victor" (Mathieu Goldfield) - but what they seem to be achieving beggars belief! It's the prevailing ambiguity that makes this an interesting film to watch. It has little actual structure and though there is a chronology of sorts throughout, we are never entirely (or even remotely) certain of our footing here. There's a glimmer of light towards the end when he and his sympathetic nursing friend "Stella" (Roxane Duran) appear to offer us some sort of solution, or explanation - bit even then, a lot of this is left to our own imaginations about what we think it is/was all about. It's quirky and unusual and worth eighty minutes - but don't expect to get to the end with many answers.

cleareyesfullhearts

2/10

Spoilers

Two stars for the stunning imagery - not much else to say, sadly. I know better than to trust a movie that has a much higher critical consensus than audience score (80% vs 45% on Rotten Tomatoes? woof), but I gave this a shot because it was on a list I saw of the "100 best movies on Netflix." This is the type of movie I may have liked in my late teens/early 20s when I was really into tragic, beautiful indie and foreign films that didn't really make sense but did manage to be RIDIC pretentious. Even though it tries hard to be unsettling horror, it never quite gets there. As other reviews I've seen around the internet have mentioned, this movie isn't going to answer any of the questions you have: [spoiler]Why do these women have suckers, and why did they decide to use small boys (no uterus, bodies too small to hold a fetus if we're being honest) to be their incubators? Why does the nurse feel some inexplicable affinity just for the main character and help him but not the other boys? What's with the weird pedophilia-like vibes? Why do all these ladies have bleached eyebrows and eyelashes, just to make them look creepier??[/spoiler] All these questions and more can be completely unanswered if you decide to watch this crap movie!!