God's Creatures

A film that wields its simple premise with devastating impact.

Anchored by a superb performance by Emily Watson, God’s Creatures is a small, quiet film that packs a surprising punch.

Two powerful moments punctuate this film’s conclusion: one abrupt and unambiguous, one mournful and contemplative. Crowley’s story ultimately shifts to a perspective Hollywood stories don’t often empathize with, hinting at a breaking of cycles, a kind of triumph in the face of both man and nature’s adversity.

God’s Creatures is a story about women doing the best they can by one another in a place where the odds are stacked against them. It’s a chilly film but not a heartless one; sometimes the nature of forgiveness is captured best in a small sliver of light.

The film’s formal flourishes are modest, centering the actors ahead of all else.

This solid but familiar drama is acted with conviction; Watson and Mescal are equally compelling. But there’s only so much a quality performance can do – and the film leans heavily on shots of Watson’s troubled face – when the material is a well-meaning but dourly rote exploration of cycles of violence.

God’s Creatures is yet another movie about a mother realizing too slowly that her son may be a dangerous sociopath. Screenwriter Shane Crowley’s thin characterizations do little to make this tired trope worth revisiting, instead opting to shroud the film in mystery regarding its central crime.

The plot of God’s Creatures is pretty much set in stone from the start, both in tone and pacing, so there's not much to delve further into. Personally, I don't think the storyline is about you figuring out what's going on before the characters do - because you actually do - but more about experiencing Emily Watson's character's dilemma and what ultimately causes her to take the decision with which the film concludes. A good drama, but it lacked spark and more flavor.

Slow paced drama with a decent cast and cinematography. There are few suprises within the plot and a few logic leaps to get past, but if the mood serves then dry grit drama is here and ready for you on the wind swept shores of a small Irish village!

A Scottish mother (Emily Watson) finds herself caught in a moral dilemma when she impulsively decides to lie in order to protect her young son (Paul Mescal) from a heinous crime that he has been accused of in a rural Scottish fishing community. This is more of a slow burn from A24, and while there's really nothing too extraordinary on display here, it's the onscreen performances of Watson and Mescal that really keep things afloat here. Otherwise, it is somewhat of a forgettable film.

Painfully slow story of guilt and consequences. Everybody just plods along. Excellent cinematography, rich ambiance and sound aren't enough to save it. Might be an interesting place to visit, but you wouldn't want to live there.

I wanted to like it and I don't believe it is genuinely "bad", it's just super uneventful. Over time, it becomes boring and almost insufferable. This one should have been 20+ minutes shorter.