Chaos Walking: Neon NZ Film Review

Less wrought than many other young adult dystopian sagas, Doug Liman's take on The Knife of Never Letting Go by Patrick Ness, manages to both intrigue and confound in its execution.

Spider-Man's Tom Holland is Todd, who lives on a world which forces the manifestations of male thoughts. This phenomenon, known as The Noise, provides an unfiltered access into Todd's neuroses, and also those around him.

Brought up to believe all the women in his village died, Todd's astounded to come across Daisy Ridley's Viola, a space girl who literally fell from the sky in a starship crash. But when the town's mayor, David Prentiss (Mads Mikkelsen, replete in a fur coat and foppish hat) finds out a woman is among them, a desperate hunt begins....

It's fair to say that much of Chaos Walking feels like a set up for a franchise, rather than a fully rounded adventure.

That's part of its failing, as Liman feels like the script he's directing doesn't feel fulfilled and complete, but there's not enough of a pull to gravitate back to Todd and Viola's world once again.

Disturbingly prescient over man's thoughts and attitudes towards women, Chaos Walking becomes an uncomfortable mix of teenage lusting made real by Todd's thoughts, and a literal hunt by men threatened by women. Awkward moments of Todd dreaming of kissing Viola without consent hang disturbingly in the air, no matter how much of an insight into male puberty it purports to be. It's the very literal version of the evil that men do writ large on the screen, and given contemporary themes and parallels with the Sarah Everard case, it's quite uncomfortable in parts.

While the world-building and scope is effectively realised, the human elements fail to cohere, and the film is little more than a series of chases with some alien life thrown in for good measure. As Todd, and all the other men's thoughts come tumbling out of the screen in an audible overload, the film teeters dangerously close to gibberish. It feels like a teen version of The Walking Dead with factions squabbling and the feel of various missions to go here, do that and fight out of it.

Ridley is stoic as Viola, but is called on to do little more than simply look threatened, fight back or provide some exposition. Character deaths don't feel fully realised, scenes revel in their brevity, and emotional beats are truncated by a cruel editing knife which doesn't do the film any kind of justice.

Chaos Walking isn't quite the disaster you've been led to believe, but it is a frustrating experience that hints at more which feels like it will never come.