Wounds (2019, Armie Hammer, Dakota Johnson, Zazie Beetz, Karl Glusman, Brad William Henke) – Movie Review

Oh Armie Hammer! He finds himself stranded in writer-director Babak Anvari’s going-nowhere horror mystery dud Wounds (2019), based on The Visible Filth, a horror novella by Nathan Ballingrud. Yet he gives is his all as 30something New Orleans bartender Will, who picks up a phone left behind after a fracas at Rosie (Kerry Cahill)’s bar where he works.

Will does nothing to help when his hulking friend Eric (Brad William Henke) is badly hurt, and the four students in the bar video the fight on a cellphone. Then he starts fighting with his live-in girlfriend Carrie (Dakota Johnson) and picks a fight with Jeffrey (Karl Glusman), the new boyfriend of the girl he fancies, Alicia (Zazie Beetz). Will is falling apart, and it ain’t pretty. He’s drinking and seeing bugs.

Disturbing things begin to happen – but what the heck are they, and after a while, who cares? The ending, if that is what it is, is a particular letdown, leading to some derisory laughter at the film’s expense at the press show. Yes it starts promisingly, and continues to be eerie, mysterious and vaguely disturbing, and it is well made, and nicely shot in New Orleans. But Wounds falls apart in its third act, and ends up as an incredibly frustrating experience.

Anvari won a BAFTA Film Award for Outstanding Debut by a British Writer, Director or Producer for Under the Shadow (2016).

Apart from The Social Network (2010) and Call Me by Your Name (2017), Hammer has been desperately unlucky with his movies, as a survivor of The Lone Ranger (2013), and The Man from U.N.C.L.E. (2015).

© Derek Winnert 2019 Movie Review

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