It gets points for originality, that's for sure. And then it really depends on how you want to see it.
It starts more as a comedy. That's a guy, stranded on an island, that uses a corpse's farts to get away jet-ski style. He then uses it to get water. He's drinking water coming from the corpse like he's been thirsty for days. Nevermind that he could have collected the rain himself, he even had a cup, but no, he's drinking from the corpse, sure. The title's swiss army's corpse then becomes a secondary thing. It could have been funny to see how he discovers new usage and what he does with it, but it's just condensed in a short montage. Too bad.
Then, obviously he starts talking to the corpse, and the corpse reply.
Comedy is still there. It's funny, as he tries to explain life to a corpse that doesn't remember anything. Beyond the comedy, most of the discussions can also be seen as satire of society and its taboos. And most of the movie can also be seen as a metaphor of that.
But, as clearly the corpse does not speak for real, it's all in his head. And that means the corpse represents him, trying to figure out life, while he just replies with the taboos that his parents and society taught him, that he clearly does not understand. That's the first hint that he might not just go crazy from his situation, he might have already been a little deranged beforehand.
Then comes the girl. And creepiness goes way up. His phone's screen is a picture of a random girl he saw in the bus. HUGE red flag. And the biggest part of the movie is spent there, while he deploys treasures of inventivity and a lot of efforts to recreate the situation, with the corpse playing him and himself playing the girl. There's clearly no more idea of trying to escape his situation and survive.
You can still see it as funny. You can see it as cute, it's all shown like a magical thing. It's shown exactly like a child fantasy would have been in a Wes Anderson movie, and that would be cute. Or if you stop half a second to think about what that implies, it's beyond creepy. It's now clear that Hank was not sane, and already a very creepy person before this happened.
Then comes the last part and the reveal, that apparently a lot of people feel doesn't fit. Well, it only doesn't fit if you stayed the whole time on the very literal layer of the movie and assumed the corpse was really talking, and that you ignored the innumerable flags that were raised along the way. I mean, again: the guy's phone screen is a stolen photo of a random girl in the bus. That pretty much tells you everything you need to know about how much of a creep he is.
Turns out he was never lost, and spent his whole little adventure barely a few hundred meters from where the girl lives, with her husband and daughter. That's not a random encounter, he knew where she lived, he was not only a creep but a stalker too. Not only does it fit, it makes much more sense and totally explains his weird behavior.
So you can see it as a comedy.
You can see it as a cute dreamy fantasy with a dash of satire of the society.
But if you do, you're probably thinking like Hank: a creepy retarded deranged incel psychopath. On the first layer it looks like the corpse is here to save Hank's life. But maybe it was here to save Sarah's. If he hadn't found that corpse, it probably would have been her there, forced to live his little fantasies, alive, or dead...
What's funny is that at the beginning I was thinking, "wow, Paul Dano is giving a real performance, and for once he's not playing a creepy guy, didn't think he could do that".
Review by FLYVIP 2BlockedParent2020-12-29T15:13:32Z
It gets points for originality, that's for sure. And then it really depends on how you want to see it.
It starts more as a comedy. That's a guy, stranded on an island, that uses a corpse's farts to get away jet-ski style. He then uses it to get water. He's drinking water coming from the corpse like he's been thirsty for days. Nevermind that he could have collected the rain himself, he even had a cup, but no, he's drinking from the corpse, sure.
The title's swiss army's corpse then becomes a secondary thing. It could have been funny to see how he discovers new usage and what he does with it, but it's just condensed in a short montage. Too bad.
Then, obviously he starts talking to the corpse, and the corpse reply.
Comedy is still there. It's funny, as he tries to explain life to a corpse that doesn't remember anything. Beyond the comedy, most of the discussions can also be seen as satire of society and its taboos. And most of the movie can also be seen as a metaphor of that.
But, as clearly the corpse does not speak for real, it's all in his head. And that means the corpse represents him, trying to figure out life, while he just replies with the taboos that his parents and society taught him, that he clearly does not understand. That's the first hint that he might not just go crazy from his situation, he might have already been a little deranged beforehand.
Then comes the girl. And creepiness goes way up. His phone's screen is a picture of a random girl he saw in the bus. HUGE red flag. And the biggest part of the movie is spent there, while he deploys treasures of inventivity and a lot of efforts to recreate the situation, with the corpse playing him and himself playing the girl. There's clearly no more idea of trying to escape his situation and survive.
You can still see it as funny.
You can see it as cute, it's all shown like a magical thing. It's shown exactly like a child fantasy would have been in a Wes Anderson movie, and that would be cute.
Or if you stop half a second to think about what that implies, it's beyond creepy. It's now clear that Hank was not sane, and already a very creepy person before this happened.
Then comes the last part and the reveal, that apparently a lot of people feel doesn't fit. Well, it only doesn't fit if you stayed the whole time on the very literal layer of the movie and assumed the corpse was really talking, and that you ignored the innumerable flags that were raised along the way. I mean, again: the guy's phone screen is a stolen photo of a random girl in the bus. That pretty much tells you everything you need to know about how much of a creep he is.
Turns out he was never lost, and spent his whole little adventure barely a few hundred meters from where the girl lives, with her husband and daughter. That's not a random encounter, he knew where she lived, he was not only a creep but a stalker too. Not only does it fit, it makes much more sense and totally explains his weird behavior.
So you can see it as a comedy.
You can see it as a cute dreamy fantasy with a dash of satire of the society.
But if you do, you're probably thinking like Hank: a creepy retarded deranged incel psychopath. On the first layer it looks like the corpse is here to save Hank's life. But maybe it was here to save Sarah's. If he hadn't found that corpse, it probably would have been her there, forced to live his little fantasies, alive, or dead...
What's funny is that at the beginning I was thinking, "wow, Paul Dano is giving a real performance, and for once he's not playing a creepy guy, didn't think he could do that".