Sci-fi fans got a monster streaming surprise this year. Right after the Super Bowl, Netflix launched The Cloverfield Paradox, a surprise new entry in the franchise. It wasn't all that good. An amusing B-picture and a reasonable excuse for chugging light beer, sure, but that’s about it.
Sometimes movies fail. But Netflix's foray into sci/fi horror was prefaced by last year’s fantasy flop, Bright, and when The Cloverfield Paradox failed, Netflix needed to right the sci-fi ship, so it turned to director Duncan Jones. With Jones still enjoying some sci-fi cred from his first mini-masterpiece, Moon, it seems like a pretty safe bet.
Well, the bad news is Netflix’s latest gamble, Mute, doesn't pay off either. In fact, Jones's new movie might be Netflix’s worst sci-fi film yet. Don't get me wrong, the sets and costumes and nifty-looking tech are all quite striking. But the storytelling is so uncommonly flat, it feels like the movie almost dares you to not care. Not a great sign for the streaming future of sci-fi movies, either.
Leo (Alexander Skarsgård) is a bartender in dystopian future Berlin. We know it's dystopian because there's lots of Blade Runner neon and street steam. Leo can't speak, due to a never-quite-explained childhood injury, and he’s never had corrective surgery because he is Amish.
Yes, Amish. One of the many interesting ideas in Mute is that there is a resurgence of the Amish religion in a world where technology is everywhere. Leo's inability to speak is a storytelling obstacle, but a better film could make use of it. After all, silent movies are a thing. But he is completely inscrutable here. All we know is that he has a habit of drinking enormous beer steins of water after exhaling.
Weirdly, the most detailed example of this overly wired world is a step-by-step process of ordering takeout and charging it to your phone. But the other lingering threat is one of a never-ending war in places like “New Kandahar.”
Throughout Berlin there are Americans who have gone AWOL, and this includes Cactus (Paul Rudd) and Duck (Justin Theroux). They are military surgeons in hiding, working for the local Russian mafia in the hopes of securing letters of transit.
Cactus seems like a good guy at first, caring for his young daughter (and demanding she not drink soda, even if she is being raised in a brothel), but he has a sadistic streak. We soon suspect he’s involved with the disappearance of Naadirah (Syneb Salah), Leo's lovely blue-haired girlfriend and waitress at the same mobbed-up bar. In true film noir fashion, she goes missing and Leo goes looking for answers.
Mute head-fakes that this story is going to be all about cracking skulls to find the girl—Taken gone high-tech—but Jones is more interested in just giving us a tour of the world he's created. Unfortunately, unlike last year's Blade Runner 2049 (the film it desperately tries to emulate), Mute is an absolute bore.
There is very little forward momentum, and while Asian-inspired sex robot dens certainly look cool, they meaningless if you don't care about the characters. The art design in Mute is extraordinary, but it’s so blended into the background it has no resonance. Why do the henchmen wear black mouth-guards and have silver eyes? I don’t know, but it looks great.
But the ultimate punchline comes when the movie ends and the big twist is that there is no twist. What you thought was happening was actually happening all along.
Unlike The Cloverfield Paradox and Bright, which had the “eh, I'm lazy, and since I pay for Netflix why not” factor working for it, Mute is a punishing watch. I'd be fascinating to see the data on how many people don’t even make it halfway through. Mute also foolishly includes a call-back to Moon, but all this does is remind you of a better movie—one you might have even seen in a theater.
I admit, every time I see a movie in a theater, I still feel like, this is how a film should be seen. And yet, I'm no different than anyone else. Why drag myself down to some disturbingly sticky theater when I can stream an old favorite from my couch?
Netflix is still a place for great cinematic creations, TV shows like Stranger Things and films like The Meyerwitz Stories are evidence enough, but eventually its subscriber base will plateau.
So far the streaming service-turned-film-studio has the distribution model down, but it really needs to start upping their sci-fi film game. Until that happens, movie theaters have nothing to fear.
