ARQ

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source: ARQ

I saw Edge of Tomorrow a few months ago, and ARQ is a movie best scene when it's been so long since you've seen a good time loop movie that your standards aren't too high. Because Edge of Tomorrow is a lot better. In this movie, a man keeps going through the same eventful couple of hours as masked thugs invade his home. There's more to it than that, of course, and he finds himself dealing with a variety of circumstances in a variety of ways. It's all perfectly adequate as time loop stories go, but it lacks the sort of clever touches one expects from mind-breaking fiction, although I did like a revelation close to the end. This is a low budget movie that all takes place on a handful of sets in an ordinary house. The dystopian background is generic and the acting is more functional than anything else. It's fine, if you have nothing better to watch.

After all the excellent original content which Netflix has been producing, I was really looking forward to what I hoped to be an exciting and intelligent sci-fi movie. Unfortunately, ARQ feels more like a mediocre episode of an average sci-fi TV series than a polished film. The film's action kicks off immediately, with characterisation slowly doled out as the day repeats itself. Neither character gets fleshed out enough for us to be really invested in them - which is acceptable in a movie where the plot and action are constantly driving forward. However, the film could certainly have benefited from better main performances - both lead actors turn in performances worthy of a poor B-movie; a feeling only enhanced by the utterly mediocre dialogue in the script, filled with clichéd lines. Neither aspect of the premise - the home invasion or the time loop - is original, and that would be fine if the movie was exceptionally well-executed or introduced innovative twists. ARQ, however, plays out fairly straightforwardly, and after the initial rush of excitement, the frenetic action of the film becomes increasingly tedious before the end. As far as world-building goes, the film provides snippets of information about the outside world in a respectably restrained manner, never resorting to forced exposition. But the amount of information we are given is insufficient to make the film's world interesting to the viewer, and nor does the near-future setting of the film provide any interesting aesthetic or technological curiosities more interesting than an alarm clock with the time holographically projected above it. I won't spoil the end of this film, but I will state that I found it entirely unsatisfying. It does not provide proper resolution to the story, but nor does it deliver an interesting twist or a memorable ambiguity. In conclusion, I cannot recommend this film, as it fails even to wrap up the mediocre plot in a satisfying way; it's not absolutely awful, but it's so uninspiring that it's not worth the time to watch.

This is my first review after being on this site since it was created, so bare with me! The movie starts off alright with quick references and the usual back and forth between characters in a loop movie. I was surprised with the pace and changes we are presented with and it's done quite well, especially for basically a debut film for the director. The acting is solid enough and I like the subtlety of the external story (raging war between two factions left for control of the world etc), there could have been so much subplot information which could have easily just made the movie a mess. Unfortunately as the movie proceeds you do start to question the choices made by the lead characters but it's not the major plot hole. The thing I could not get past is that the loop only exists within a certain radius of the machine, so therefore everything outside of the loop continues as normal. Would this not mean that the war has been raging for an unknown amount of time and Sonny would have called in for extraction of the ARK probably thousands of times? Wouldn't the dudes at Torus be like "Yo dudes, Sonny keeps calling in for extraction like every 3 hours, shouldn't we send the Droideker and see what's up?" Overall, I didn't mind this film and it's certainly not the worst film you'll ever watch, but too many questions are left unanswered and the major plot hole is annoying. Cheers.

*some basic concept spoilers below* This is a typical time loop movie. Think Groundhog's Day. I'm not opposed to the use of the cliché. Edge of Tomorrow was a fun and entertaining take on the concept. This movie is a lot less fun than that. It's low budget and it never really allows you to appreciate the characters. The characters are all just rats in a maze, scurrying around without giving us much reason to care about them. The female love interest, Hannah, in particular was quite annoying. Why does the main character love her? Why does he put up with her constant betrayals? I never figured any of that out. Ultimately, I found that the movie ended in an unsatisfying manner. I marginally appreciated the movie, but wouldn't watch it again.