Serenity: The 'gobsmackingly awful' twist, explained
The gimmicky plot turn has been branded 'seismically stupid'
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Your support makes all the difference.New film Serenity has one of the most ludicrous twists in film history.
The film, which stars Mathew McConaughey and Anne Hathaway, tells the story of a fisherman named Baker Dill who’s on a quest to catch a tuna he’s named Justice. He lives on an island named Plymouth and, every day, he hits the ocean in his boat, the titular Serenity.
:: Read a compilation of the film’s most unintentionally hilarious quotes here
For the most part, it plays like a Body Heat-style noir that sees Hathaway’s character, Dill’s ex-wife Karen, offer him $10m to kill her abusive new husband, Frank (Jason Clarke).
While this is all happening, the script – written by Peaky Blinders‘s Steven Knight, who also directs – sporadically refers to Dill’s son Patrick who we only glimpse in what appear to be flashbacks: he’s locked in his bedroom, tapping away at his computer with his violent step-father trying to get in. Then there’s Jeremy Strong’s suited character who sticks out like a sore thumb as he runs around the island trying – and failing – to communicate a message to Dill.
It’s when Strong’s character finally tracks Dill down that things get truly weird. The twist is Dill is in the middle of... a video game – and not just any game, but one created by his son who plays it to escape from his abusive step-father. It’s a left-field revelation that will go down in the history books as one of the milennium’s most gimmicky plot turns. The final half of the film sees Dill comng to terms with the fact he’s trapped in a video game.
You can read our one-star review of the film here.
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