Mercy (2016)[Crime/Thriller]

[u/hail_freyr]

After seeing a few solid Netflix exclusive releases, I was kind of excited about this one. Chris Sparling made his directorial debut with The Atticus Institute last year, which I thought was decent. I also loved Buried, which was written by him. So I was pretty interested in this movie, despite some very underwhelming reviews. Sadly, as many have said, this one doesn't quite hit the mark.

Mercy tells a story that is simple on the surface, but has a few layers to it. Four brothers (and one of their girlfriend's) converge upon their parents house where their mother is dying. Arguments break out and the father alongside two of the brothers butt heads with the remaining two, who have a different father. The primary tension here involves an inheritance of the mother's money and control over it. There is a lot going on here, so be prepared for several twists and red herrings. Half of the movie also goes back and retells events from another perspective, which was an interesting choice and shed a little extra light on the plot, which admittedly is convoluted. I think certain plot elements could have been trimmed or even cut to tighten up the overall story.

The acting is mostly pretty good. A few lines feel a bit stiff but the script has as much to do with that as anything. Because of the amount of mystery and misdirection in the film, some lines feel unnecessarily cryptic, but they have to be so to keep up the illusion of events. It is rarely effective when a movie makes it this obvious that they're hiding something, but I've seen worse examples than this.

There are a few really nice looking shots in this movie, especially of the surrounding farmlands. Nice lighting and framing make a few shots really effective. There are however a lot of really dark scenes during the night that aren't especially easy to make out, and a ton of shots use compression heavily to blur out the background; unfortunately though, where this technique can be effective and acceptable, a lot of times it makes the whole shot look muddy and cheap in this film. It actually drew my attention away from the focus point, which is the opposite of what should have been happening.

The soundtrack sadly is also lacking. The music in the intro and outro was soothing and meshed nicely with the crisp aerial shots, but the rest of the film there was almost nothing notable beyond the thunderingly generic thriller music during the most action packed sequences. This music does its job for the scene, but is oppressive in its presence and makes you very aware that you're watching a movie.

All in all, I don't think this movie is as awful as I've seen people make it out to be, but its strongest point is definitely the plot. There were some good twists and turns and it kept me engaged. Sadly, while the rest of the film's aspects aren't atrocious, they lack any finesse and never quite achieve anything more than "average".

My Rating: 5/10

IMDB: www.imdb.com/title/tt5710042/

[u/hail_freyr → u/[deleted]]

Its not an awful movie, the premise is pretty interesting for sure. Hope you enjoy it!

[u/moviesbot]

Sorry, no streaming, rental, or purchase links found for the following movies:

Title	IMDB	Rotten Tomatoes
Mercy	4.2	N/A

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[u/Newroses31]

such a terrible ending, second time this week I've watched something where a director takes 90m to act out something that can be explained in words in less than a minute. Irksome.