Critic Reviews

With Magic Hour, Aselton and Duplass have again given us something uniquely special.

The result is a wonderful showcase for Aselton. She has written an emotionally complex role that’s built to provide her a stage with which to let loose, to feel the roller coaster that is life beside another human while enduring fate’s cruel hand.

Written alongside her real-life husband (and fellow filmmaker) Mark Duplass, Aselton has made it clear in press materials that the film, about a loving if troubled married couple (played by Aselton and Daveed Diggs) isn’t explicitly about her actual marriage. But it’s also not not about her and Duplass’ long-running relationship. Still, once you see where Aselton and Duplass’ script takes their characters, the differentiation becomes easier to swallow, if not all the more intriguing.

The unexpected formal execution draws the excitement out of what’s mostly a straightforward narrative.

The central conceit is both interesting and clever, it's often touchingly performed, and it has some ideas that are, when dwelt on, quite profound. But the story is wrapped in a self-consciously "artistic" style that is only rarely additive. More often, it just gets in the way.

In the end, Magic Hour is quite a mixed experience. There are plenty of real, raw emotions on the screen and the page, but the screenplay feels too repetitive and surface-level for most of the runtime.

[Aselton's] excellent playing Erin, despite scenes of questionable worth concocted by the screenwriters. But it’s not enough to save a collection of ideas that never quite cohere.

Sometimes eloquent and often rocky, Magic Hour is good enough to make you wish it was much less predictable.

A crafty reveal does not a clever film make, and even at a merciful 80 minutes, the device eventually feels more tired than the sullen Erin, who soldiers on through her suffering.