Rim of the World
When you really sit and think about it, Stranger Things is a miracle. What the Duffer Brothers, that cast, and everyone else that work on the show have done is remarkable. The world that they have created and the story that they are telling is nothing short of incredible. But when you really sit and think about it, Stranger Things is a curse. It’s a curse on audiences, on studios, and on the writers and directors who have to recreate a phenomenon.
Everyone is trying to smash together a group of preteen friends to run around and save the world. But no one has found the right formula. And they won’t. There can’t be another Stranger Things. No sooner will we find another Beyoncé or Prince. So, what audiences get is a bunch of lesser films and shows that never find their footing. Netflix, in particular, is littered with them like a landfill. Piling up half-baked premises to stew forever until the world ends.
Still, these impersonators do have something that they do well. They understand chemistry. And the casting shows it. I can’t name a Stranger Things disciple with a bad cast. And Rim of the World is no exception. The kids are easily the best part of the film and if they had better material they could have made a hit. Choosing a group of young actors seems to be the easiest job in Hollywood right now. The hard part is not wasting them.
Rim of the World gets its name from the summer camp at the center of its plot. It is here that the main characters meet and set off on their journeys. There’s Alex, the nerdy, lonely, momma’s boy. ZhenZhen, the runway who rarely talks. Then there’s Dariush, the spoiled loud caricature of a rich black person. Gabriel, a virtuous dyslexic, joins the group later.
The plot starts moving when an astronaut crash lands at the camp during an alien invasion. When the kids find her, she entrusts them with getting a key (literally) to the JPL (Jet Propulsion Laboratory) in Pasadena, which is 70 miles away from camp. This, she explains, is the only way that they can stop the aliens from destroying the earth. The kids are then racing the clock, and that’s before they start getting chased by one of the aliens and it’s “dog”. They make their way through an abandoned Los Angeles, lost and afraid, making sure to hit the typical dystopian teen film plot points. This includes a little fun in an empty shopping mall and a joyride in a stolen car. Along the way, the character’s all reveal their sad back stories that inform the choices that they make. But none of them are as compelling as they should be and their payoffs are too obvious to feel effective.
Some of the biggest issues of the film arise early. The production value is poor, which isn’t the film’s fault, but it opens like a period piece. It feels like the 80’s. When you realize it’s not, the visual effects are all the more jarring. There’s literally no way to tell what year it is. Instead of choosing an era and sticking to it, the film moves through decades whenever it feels like (Coogi sweaters, the earliest smartphones invented, and The Revenant are all accounted for). The resulting confusing is hard to sit with. It’s hard for a movie to truly captivate you when it’s floating in space unsure of where to land.
As a result, the young cast is left to do a lot of heavy lifting for the film; but Zach Stentz’s script offers them no reprieve. It’s clear that the film doesn’t know what it wants to be. At times it wants to be about finding your group and allowing them to help you get through tough moments. Other times it has nothing to say besides “sex is wild huh?” Sex jokes are the main vehicle for the film’s comedy, with some racism sprinkled in for good measure. Unfortunately, those jokes don’t work the way that they did back in 2005. And it’s worse that two of the most wholesome moments in the film are where I found it’s biggest laughs.
Rim of the World is what happens when you try to shove as many idea’s as possible into one film. A few cuts and some other tweaks and it could have at least been fun. Instead, the McG directed feature is a muddled and uninspired film with wasted potential. Stranger Things is a miracle. It is not easy to make something so clearly influenced by other beloved ideas. It becomes difficult to find your own lane, to show off what makes your specific thing special. Rim of the World has it’s moments, but they are so few and far between that they never feel real. All of the ingredients are there but it still doesn’t taste right. Whenever we get the next entry into the teen sci-fi genre, I hope it can satiate everyone’s hunger.
I give it 1 out of 5 trash cans.
