Wednesday, January 31, 2018

Review of 'Colossal'

I watched this all the way through - not at a single sitting - and am rather bemused by it. The plot is so silly that it has to be an allegory, but it wasn't immediately obvious what it was about. Anne Hathaway is a young and slightly frivolous woman with a drinking problem who is shoved out of her controlling boyfriend's apartment) and goes back to her home town, where she moves into her parents' apparently empty but rather beautiful town house and then hooks up with a guy she used to know from before she left. At the same time a giant lizard-humanoid begins to terrorize Seoul, and she soon realizes that she is the cause of this - every time she sets foot in a playground near the house the giant monster appears in Seoul, and every move she makes is mirrored by the monster.

See what I mean? At one level it's conventional rom-com/rom-dram territory; the guy she used to know turns out to be a bit disturbed and nasty, there's another guy she quite likes who seems to be attracted to her...but it's also this weird stuff that is barely explained, despite one scene close to the end that purports to be show why this is happening.

In the early hours of this morning I decided it was an allegory about alcoholism. A bar is the focus for much of the action. She has a drinking problem, and so does the guy who turns about to be nasty. He drunk-drives, and is violent when drunk. There is a lot about doing harm to innocent people as a result of unintentional actions, and a fairly heavy hint in the final scene. Perhaps the town the monster destroys is Seoul just for the play on words - 'soul'.

If anyone else watches this and can shed any more light, I'd be grateful, particularly if there are other visual clues in there that confirm my hypothesis.

Watched on Netflix.

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