Jack Reynor | Screenlife Reviews

After crafting the biggest movie of all time you could be forgiven for resting on your laurels for a while. Not so for Joe and Anthony Russo – directors of monster Marvel hits Avengers: Infinity War and Endgame – who dove headfirst into an epic of a different sort with the Tom Holland starring Cherry. A sprawling, multiple year spanning odyssey of one man’s journey through a seemingly normal adolescence in Cleveland through to a PTSD-inducing stint in the army and a subsequent life of crime and crippling addiction, Cherry may be framed as a dissection of the opioid addiction crisis rampant in America, but it is as much a love story between two people who are simultaneously so right and so wrong for each other. The leading duo of Tom Holland and Ciara Bravo are phenomenal, but the Russo’s throw every cinematic trick in the book at their first post-MCU outing, constantly threatening to derail the whole thing with a jarring and bizarre mixture of film techniques.

A drifter by nature Cherry (Holland) moves about his life in Cleveland without direction, passing through a string of dead-end jobs and finding himself infatuated with college classmate Emily (Bravo). A casual dabbling in drugs is just a taste of what is to come as Emily and Cherry’s relationship begins to turn serious and a fight one night prompts a drastic reaction from both parties, with Emily threatening to head to Canada and Cherry enlisting in the US army. Inexplicably drawn back to one another, the couple stick together throughout Cherry’s two-year stint in the army, dragged through the worst of the worst as a combat medic and suffering from severe PTSD on his return to the States. A prescription of OxyContin to treat his illness serves as the entry point for Cherry’s addiction, abusing the painkiller and hooking Emily before the couple turn to a life of heroin abuse. The junkie lifestyle proves unsustainable for the young lovers however and, desperate to pay off their debt to dealer Pills and Coke (Jack Reynor), Cherry turns to a life of crime to sustain them, robbing banks at gunpoint to feed the vicious cycle as his guilty conscious begins to creep up and eat away at him.

The relationship between Cherry and Emily is the centre of Cherry, the connective tissue that pulls you through the three distinct periods of this young man’s life. Those eras may fluctuate in quality and the style choices made by the Russos (we’ll get to those later) may draw your attention away at times but Holland and Bravo’s performances are simply phenomenal, fully investing you in this intense, toxic relationship between two people who could not be more wrong for each other but, like the drugs they inject by the boatload, can’t seem to kick. It’s easily Holland’s most ambitious performance to date, a far cry from the wholesome, boyish charm of Peter Parker and more akin to the darker side of his character in The Devil All the Time. Indeed it seems to have been a difficult role for the young actor – with multiple interviews covering the intense places he went to for the performance – but it pays off. The look of sheer terror in this young man’s eyes when his friend is blown apart in battle is harrowing to watch and the subsequent heart-shattering breakdown make you want to reach through the screen and give him a hug.

Spending the time to show a significant portion of Cherry’s military journey makes that eventual turn to drugs all the more debilitating for the audience. This kid has survived so much and come out on the other side but with a mental trauma that no one should ever experience, especially not a young 20-year-old in the prime of his life. His turn towards something that can numb his pain may be understandable to a degree but it is no less disheartening and watching the transformation of this wide-eyed, fresh-faced person with the world before him into a shell of a man, ravaged by drugs and mental disease is a hard thing to do, which is a testament to the strength of Holland’s performance. That performance doesn’t work nearly as well without the presence of Ciara Bravo’s Emily to balance it. In the younger years of their relationship, Emily makes some strong choices which ultimately impact the couple’s entire life, and Bravo wears the pain and stress of these decisions throughout the entire film; never forgiving herself for what she has caused Cherry and unable to bring herself to stop using the drugs that temporarily halt that pain. These two performances are so all encompassing that there is nary a supporting character in sight, with Jack Reynor’s clumsily named drug dealer and a handful of Cherry’s friends operating on the periphery, influencing the key couple’s relationship but never intruding on that bond. At the end of the day Cherry and Emily only have each other – and the Russo’s succeed in showing the strength of that love against all else.

Where they go wild however is in the construction of the film. Seemingly free from any shackles imposed on them during their Marvel days in keeping a distinct, grounded visual style across multiple films and franchises, the brothers throw every trick in the book at the screen to spice up a grounded drama that really requires no fancy trickery that takes away from the performances. That’s what these tricks ultimately do, distracting from Holland and Bravo constantly with awkward, gaudy colour grading during scenes of drug abuse; flooding the screen with an ugly grey sheen and popping colour in as a representation of the trip or turning the whole screen red during somewhat pretentious title card scenes, indicating new chapters in Cherry’s story. Awkward voiceover and fourth wall breaks from Holland dilute the potency of the performances in scenes that require no explanation of what is going (again a hallmark of The Devil All The Time) and perhaps the most jarring and unwarranted effect arrives during Cherry’s military experience: a complete aspect ratio change that reduces the widescreen format to a square box in the middle of the screen, a frankly bizarre choice that will have you checking your TV settings for an explanation. I questioned at times whether this over-stylisation of the film was an attempt at a Goodfellas-esque crime epic, but where that film glorified the violence and excess Cherry admonishes it, with all these awkwardly utilised techniques working against the very grounded story the Russo’s are trying to tell.

Cherry represents an awkward step away from the multi-billion dollar franchise that made the Russo brothers household names but a welcome willingness to keep working when they very well could have taken some much earned time off. While it may seem at times that the brothers are working against themselves, hampering the strength of their commentary on the opioid addiction crisis through over-the-top stylisation, the performances of Holland and Bravo and the central relationship between the pair win out, keeping you locked into a love story that is more interesting and emotionally engaging than the drug commentary. It isn’t the home run into prestige drama that many were expecting but it is an interesting change of pace for the Russo brothers, and an exciting prospect of what the future holds for these two incredibly talented filmmakers.

Cherry stars Tom Holland, Ciara Bravo, Forrest Goodluck, Jeff Wahlberg, Michael Rispoli & Jack Reynor – Streaming on Apple TV+ now.

Ari Aster made waves with his 2018 debut feature Hereditary – a horror film which expertly mixed together a raw look at one family’s struggle to hold together following tragedy with a mystery involving a strange cult with closer ties to the family and their history than they think. Featuring a criminally underrated performance from Toni Collette (one of the best of the year) and with a distinct visual style, Hereditary brought new meaning to the term creepy; a slow burn build that ratcheted up the tension to breaking point before a chaotic and violent third act. It’s fair to say that expectations were high for the director’s follow-up Midsommar and it doesn’t disappoint for the most part; with another powerhouse performance from a female lead in Florence Pugh, an engrossing central mystery and somehow more tension than his previous film at times. At a beefy two and a half hours, the film sometimes gets lost on its way to the lackluster conclusion, made all the more frustrating by the excellent, inventive cinema which precede it.

Midsommar finds Aster in familiar territory, with Dani (Florence Pugh) recently learning of a great tragedy in her life, leaving her with no one to lean on other than her boyfriend Christian (Jack Reynor); a well meaning but pretty unlikeable guy who complains to his friends about the lengths he goes to keep Dani happy whilst subsequently forgetting her birthday, you know: good boyfriend problems. Dani’s current predicament leaves Christian with little choice other than to invite her on an upcoming boys trip to Sweden to visit his exchange student friend Pelle’s (Vilhelm Blomgren) secluded farm commune, along with their friends Mark (Will Poulter) and Josh (William Jackson Harper), who is writing his thesis on the Midsummer celebrations across Europe. The group are welcomed with open arms into the tight knit community, offered drugs, food and music, and things seem completely idyllic until the midsummer festivities begin, a series of bizarre and deadly rituals which threaten to tear the bonds of the group apart and perhaps the odd face or two. Think The Sound of Music meets The Hills have Eyes.

Much was made of the decision to stage almost the entire film during the day, a time generally reserved in horror films for easing audiences into the scares and setting up events that will pay off in the terrifying night. Aster once again employs the tension and atmosphere that he used so brilliantly on Hereditary to equally effective results: Midsommar is a film which breaks you down on a mental level. You never feel completely comfortable watching the events unfolding on screen, even when it’s something as innocuous as dancing, and there’s always a sense that something is off about this seemingly perfect community – which of course there is. Ultimately, however, the daylight setting is something of a double edged sword, instilling that sense of constant dread whilst also robbing the proceedings of much of their horror without the cover of night. Nothing is ever really scary and even when things start to truly go south it’s all just extremely uncomfortable to watch more than anything. Where Hereditary thrived on its use of darkness, hiding things in the black space until your eyes adjusted and your brain registered what it was seeing, Midsommar shows you everything, relying on the unsettling friendliness of the locals and the audiences knowledge that something has to go wrong at some point to keep you on your toes. It works well enough to keep you guessing about the central mystery, but it means that when all the secrets are exposed there isn’t much room to scare or surprise you anymore – you’re simply seeing the ride through to the end.

That’s not to say that Midsommar is lacking in the visual department; it’s all shot stunningly, with the rolling fields and hills of Sweden serving as a gorgeous backdrop for the horrors that unfold, giving the film an almost other worldly feel. Combine that with Aster’s bag of impressive camera tricks – from a spinning, vertigo inducing shot of the road foreshadowing the madness to come to a wave effect that plays on the environment surrounding the village when our characters are under the influence of drugs – and it all serves to immerse you in the confined environment, testing your stamina for just how much of the craziness you can endure before you break. That craziness is amplified by the epic runtime of the film, a somewhat necessary side effect to truly break the audience, there are nevertheless some plot elements that feel almost shoehorned in to create more conflict where it isn’t necessary. An argument later on in the film which acts to further divide the main group feels trivial when you take into account the events that they have seen and at a certain point the argument of “let’s embrace the local culture” should go out the window when the body count starts rising. These issues fall away though because of how good a job Aster does in getting you invested in the central mystery, and regardless of how you feel about the ending, the ride to it is engrossing and tense.

Without a doubt the strongest part of Midsommar lies in the lead performance of Florence Pugh as the damaged Dani. From the outset she’s put up against terrible circumstances and her mental state is fragile before she even arrives in Sweden. Pugh plays the character’s struggle to find support brilliantly, with a desperate desire to keep hold of Christian regardless of the way he treats her morphing into realisation and a search for acceptance elsewhere. Pugh is always up to the tasks given to her by the script – whether it’s shock at the events happening around her or exhaustion from the mental strain of resisting the cult she finds herself encircled by and the haunting events from her past constantly creeping their way into her brain. Surrounding her is a solid supporting cast, made up of both American and Swedish actors who all work brilliantly to assist Dani’s descent into madness. Jack Reynor plays the boyfriend archetype on multiple levels; Christian is acutely aware the way he is treating Dani is wrong and yet he persists, and the interactions with his friends highlight just how self-centered the character is, ultimately leading to some pretty shocking events in the final act. Reynor is tasked with quite a bit of physical acting towards the conclusion – things that would be difficult for a veteran actor to deal with – and he pulls it off wonderfully, really selling the fall of Christian. Rounding out the group is Will Poulter who brings a surprising amount of comedy to the proceedings, serving to defuse some of the ever building tension, and Vilhelm Blomgren as Pelle, a character who’s motives you’re never quite sure about, who acts almost as the narrator, guiding our characters through the festivities and the horrors they face.

Midsommar is another triumph for Ari Aster, who continues to prove himself a master of tense, atmospheric horror. Whilst falling slightly short of Hereditary in terms of its story and scares, it is nevertheless a creepy, intriguing mystery anchored by a haunting lead performance from Florence Pugh. The depth to the story and the sheer number of small details and easter eggs warrant many repeat viewings, made all the more easier by the level of craftsmanship on display visually. If Aster wants to keep making cult horror films for years to come you’ll be hard pressed to find someone with a single complaint, but with talent like this it won’t be long before he’s swinging in the majors and I can’t wait to see what kind of spine tingling carnage the man can deliver with a studio budget behind him.

Midsommarstars Florence Pugh, Jack Reynor, Will Poulter, William Jackson Harper and Vilhelm Blomgren – In cinemas now.