Unspoken suspicions finally boil over during a shared trip to the picturesque Sado Island, when Lucy is mysteriously taken ill and all but abandoned by her two travel companions. Lily’s culture shock wears off quickly, and the other details that would lend Earthquake Bird more of a sense of specificity are limited to a conversation Lucy has about whether Teiji’s features are more Western or Eastern (“Ketchup face” vs. “Soy sauce face”), and Lucy’s protest to one of the detectives she’s no different from Japanese women. EMAIL ME. © 2020 The Hollywood Reporter

FACEBOOK Wash Westmoreland’s last film, Colette, helped reclaim the life of French novelist, actress, and journalist Colette, whose husband published her work under his name. Oscar-winner Atticus Ross also provides a suitably moody score, creepy and subtle one minute, urgent and percussive the next. As her interrogation in the present-day timeline continues, that jealousy keeps consuming her, building to a feverish peak of animosity toward the missing woman. Netflix’s thriller Earthquake Bird is too little, too late.

The film, directed by Wash Westmoreland and based on the novel of the same name by Susanna Jones, opens with Japanese police questioning expat Lucy (Tomb Raider’s Alicia Vikander) about the disappearance of her friend Lily (Riley Keough). On a craft level, the pic is a polished package. Alicia Vikander and Riley Keough flounder in tepid psychosexual thriller, based on the Susanna Jones novel. Smooth, still shots become choppy and shaky, flitting around Vikander as she grows more and more panicked. Lucy claims she isn’t jealous, but she obviously is, to the point where the line between reality and imagination starts to blur. Venue: London Film Festival. Cinematographer: Chung Chung-hoon As the truth behind Lily’s disappearance and how Lucy and Teiji tie into it becomes clear, Earthquake Bird shifts the finger of blame and morphs from a tale of sexual jealousy to a story about how to process guilt. 11:50 AM PDT 10/10/2019 To learn more or opt-out, read our Cookie Policy. Its premise promises a tale full of exhilarating shocks and spectacle either sexy, scandalous, vicious or all of the above! (That’s a red flag for any relationship.) There’s a similar dynamic at play in the love triangle in Earthquake Bird — for most of its runtime, it casts the other woman as the story’s villain. By choosing I Accept, you consent to our use of cookies and other tracking technologies. Mostly working within a crisp, dark, autumnal color palette that suits the noir-ish mood, Westmoreland and his Korean cinematographer, regular Park-chan Wook collaborator Chung Chung-hoon, methodically work through a checklist of Japanese tourist sights, from Mount Fuji and Tokyo Tower to bullet trains, kimonos and karaoke bars. Having raved over Westmoreland's previous films, I was stunned to find Earthquake Bird woefully underwhelming. The Earthquake Bird book. Body parts have been found in Tokyo harbor that may belong to Lucy's missing friend Lily Bridges (Riley Keough), an extrovert American exile who was last seen leaving the Swedish woman's apartment. In a series of loosely interlocking flashbacks, the film chronicles the chain of events leading up to Lily's disappearance. Producers: Ridley Scott, Kevin J. Walsh, Michael Pruss, Ann Ruark, Georgina Pope The elements are there, but the shocks fail to rattle. Distributor: Netflix Production companies: Scott Free Productions, Twenty First City In the explosive recriminations that follow, ancient family secrets and unreliable confessions muddy the waters. The intense, secretive Teiji seems to both fascinate and scare Lucy. Meanwhile, Lucy begins a tentative romance with Teiji (Naoki Kobayashi), an archetypal tall dark stranger who catches her attention by rudely taking her photo in the street. Though it’s set in Japan in the 1980s, there’s no sense of period beyond the occasional outdated outfit and a scene set in a club, and the cultural divide between East and West comes across as relatively slim.

Despite their very different personalities, Lucy and Lily become friends at the suggestion of English expat and aspiring rock star Bob (Jack Huston).

But it is also a fairly flat treatment of over-familiar plot elements, and fatally low on the key psycho-thriller elements of suspense, surprise and dread. Ultimately, Earthquake Bird remains grounded because most viewers will have trouble buying into its absurd plot, and too few will even care. The characters suffer from that lack of focus; Lily is the most underserved, as she’s made into an antagonist for much of the movie. (There’s a regrettably Swiftian contrast between Lily and Lucy, i.e.

I admire his attempt to dig into the emotional depths of its protagonist's trauma. She was vilified, even though Sanders was equally culpable, and both of them publicly apologized.

The story takes place in Tokyo in 1989. “What are you really thinking?” he demands. But in the digging, Westmoreland and Vikander have lost grip on entertaining. I dare you.”. Parents need to know that Earthquake Bird is a dark, moody psychological thriller based on the novel by Susanna Jones. Perhaps the goal was to make a thriller that's more intellectual, less trashy fun. Until one day, out of the blue, when she is hauled in for interrogation by stern homicide detectives. The movie’s overall pace is slow, which makes it notable — and unsettling — when the action speeds up. Having learned to repress guilty childhood secrets for decades, Lucy lives a highly regimented, emotionally chilly existence. Earthquake Bird follows Lucy Fly, an enigmatic ex-pat haunted by a painful past, who enters into an intense relationship with a handsome yet similarly troubled local photographer. Earthquake Bird feels like a step back from that, muddling a potential thread on how women are often pitted against each other. The twist upon a twist is more interesting than “love triangle gone wrong,” but perhaps less sensationalist. https://www.ign.com/articles/2019/11/15/earthquake-bird-movie-review-netflix TWITTER The Hollywood Reporter, LLC is a subsidiary of Prometheus Global Media, LLC. “She wears short skirts, I wear T-shirts, she’s cheer captain and I’m on the bleachers.”), The intricacies of the story’s context also get somewhat lost. About Our Ads In fairness, each character’s apparent role shifts by the movie’s end. He hardly helps his cause by letting the plot's two most significant deaths happen offscreen, and giving Lucy a back story of historical wounds that feels like glib, by-the-numbers pop psychology. Lucy is immediately dismissive of Lily, her exact opposite in style and demeanor. The story plays out partially through flashbacks. Earthquake Bird feels like a step back from that, muddling a potential thread on how women are often pitted against each other. The Best PlayStation Deals for October 2020, Best Buy 4KTV and Amazon Fire Deals: Save in This 60-Hour Pre-Black Friday Sale, Daily Deals: Preorder Cyberpunk 2077 for PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X, or PC and Save 17% Off, Cohen on Giuliani's Borat 2 Denial: "He Did What He Did", The Boys Season 3: Jensen Ackles' Soldier Boy Explained, PS5: Third-Party Company Already Selling Custom Faceplates, Marvel Reveals the Heartbreaking Secret Behind Apocalypse's Villainy, The Suicide Squad: See the Whole Cast of the DC Movie Assembled, The Crown Season 4, V for Vendetta, and Everything Else New to Netflix in November, Gears 5 Series X Update Brings New Game+, More Batista, Netflix's The Queen's Gambit: Spoiler-Free Review, Things Ghost of Tsushima Doesn't Tell You. The British-born, Los Angeles-based Westmoreland has a pretty strong critical and commercial track record, notably as co-director of the Oscar-winning Julianne Moore drama Still Alice (2014) and the Keira Knightley-starring period piece Colette (2018). Music: Atticus Ross, Leopold Ross The dial on that antagonism shifts as Earthquake Bird becomes more of a thriller than a melodrama, but it shifts too late. The bigger problem is that it’s introduced so late that it can’t counteract the film’s stodgy lead-up. What remains is a film that is brooding, cerebral, empathetic, but not thrilling or fun. (That objection largely seems to involve the stereotype of East Asian cultures being more reserved and deferential, and the assumption isn’t explored any further.).

Netflix's Earthquake Bird is a not particularly engaging thriller featuring an inert performance from Alicia Vikander. All rights reserved. Earthquake Bird is streaming on Netflix now. Stephen Dalton Please also read our Privacy Notice and Terms of Use, which became effective December 20, 2019.

We encourage you to read our updated PRIVACY POLICY and COOKIE POLICY. Lucy, who’s fluent in Japanese and in love with the culture, has been living in Japan for five years when she’s first introduced to Lily through a mutual friend (Jack Huston), who asks her to help get the newcomer acclimated. Privacy |

Earthquake Bird brings A-list collaborators to B-movie material, but to mostly uninspired effect. A key strength of any superior genre thriller is making even the most unlikely plot twists and contrived character flaws appear plausible, but Earthquake Bird barely seems to believe even in its own pulpy premise. All three leads are terrific — especially Vikander, whose Japanese is impressive — but they’re working with material that doesn’t measure up to their talents. The number of themes present in the film might work in literary form, but as a film, Earthquake Bird feels rushed and incomplete. In particular, they make Lucy’s unraveling feel genuinely frightening, instead of unexpected.

(There’s a regrettably Swiftian contrast between Lily …

Though they eventually begin getting along, as Lily’s friendliness gets the better of Lucy, another source of tension arises as Lily also begins to grow closer to Lucy’s boyfriend Teiji (Naoki Kobayashi).

Following its world premiere at London Film Festival, it is heading for a limited theatrical release on Nov. 1, then streaming on Netflix from Nov. 15. A psychologically fragile young woman becomes caught up in a sexually charged murder investigation in writer-director Wash Westmoreland's Tokyo-set mystery thriller Earthquake Bird. Lucy largely aims her ire at Lily, even when Teiji tells her he’s deliberately behaving more warmly toward Lily in hopes of making Lucy jealous. Westmoreland and cinematographer Chung Chung-hoon (Oldboy, The Handmaiden, It) at least give the film a sense of style, lingering on the scenery and on subtly shifting expressions to make the growing unease more palpable. Director-screenwriter: Wash Westmoreland, based on The Earthquake Bird by Susanna Jones But for all its smart plumage, this bird never takes flight.

Earthquake Bird brings A-list collaborators to B-movie material, but to mostly uninspired effect. Earthquake Bird Review: Netflix's Alicia Vikander Whodunnit Gets the Little Things Right By Jordan Hoffman @jhoffman Nov 14, 2019 9:00 AM EST Much of Earthquake Bird feels familiar.

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With this guilty pleasure factor dialed right down, Westmoreland is stuck trying to squeeze excitement from wooden performances, ponderous dialogue and poorly explained hallucination scenes, not to mention minimal sexual chemistry between his passionless leads. We use cookies and other tracking technologies to improve your browsing experience on our site, show personalized content and targeted ads, analyze site traffic, and understand where our audiences come from. Lucy Fly (Vikander) is a prim Swedish translator who has lived and worked in Japan for five years, long enough to consider herself a virtual native. A brief clip from Scott's Japan-set crime thriller Black Rain (1989) is also a neat little insider homage.