Wounds

Will (Armie Hammer) is the bartender at a dive bar in New Orleans with a crowd of somewhat rough regulars. One night there is a fight, one of the more robust clientele gets glassed and in the general chaos, some affluent underage drinkers run out of the bar. One of them leaves their phone behind and Will picks it up to return to them.

Later he guesses the unlock code and starts messaging contacts to try and contact the owner.

No good will come of this.

This got stuck into my watchlist because of the involvement of Director Babak Anvari, responsible for "Under the Shadow".

Sadly it's not a patch on that excellent movie. The broad concept is good and it's quite well stocked with a decent cast but it just doesn't hang together.

It's kind of cosmic horror with the young drinkers having got caught up in some ritual that brings something terrible into reality but Will's actions are very random and self destructive to the point of breaking the narrative. It's sort of implied this is the entity's doing but I call bullshit on that.

His partner Carrie (Dakota Johnson) becomes sort of victim to it too, seemingly just by googling and there's a weird love triangle subplot with a former girlfriend played by Zazie Beetz.

It's all just a mess of attempted creepiness that doesn't work. The scenes around the bar and its patrons are good, perhaps better than any of the horror elements.

A failed attempt to do something interesting 5/10. While that's better than something completely unambitious, the result isn't worth bothering with.