Earlier this month, tension whiz Jeremy Saulnier delivered a glorious home run to Netflix in the form of Rebel Ridge, the cerebral action thriller starring Aaron Pierre as the tenacious, compassionate Terry Richmond, who wasn’t about to let diabolical police corruption run more amok than it already has.
Rebel Ridge is the full package; an incandescent casting job that can and should pave the way for Pierre’s eventual stardom, a tight script that’s as intelligent as it is robust, and an ability to make the stakes equally as exciting as the action and the fallout. Indeed, what could possibly topple such a titan?
Well, how about an unthinkably sloppy, committee-driven attempt at launching a franchise that nobody, perhaps least of all the people who made it, believed in?
Per FlixPatrol, this day of Sept. 18 has seen Uglies — the latest in a long line of Netflix sci-fi misfires — take the top spot away from Rebel Ridge, which has maintained a solid grip on the throne of the Netflix film rankings since its debut on Sept. 6.
It’s enough to make you cry. There stood Rebel Ridge, crackling with artistic and narrative might, with purpose, only to have Uglies, a film that is for all intents and purposes based on the premise of Scott Westerfeld’s 2005 novel rather than the novel itself, ascend to the top with the most unearned viewership numbers since Rebel Moon.
Indeed, the ugliness with which Uglies wears its intentions on its sleeve is palpable. Every pointless exposition dump and contrived string of dialogue is trying desperately to build a world that we simply cannot care about, because the characters aren’t so much characters as they are vibes and plot devices, and the film isn’t so much trying to tell a story as it is trying to gerrymander a product together.
The kicker of this whole ordeal is that Uglies, in its depressingly shallow attempt to contribute to the dystopia genre space, did a far worse job of it than Rebel Ridge. The latter’s storytelling backbone, after all, is built upon a sharp critique of institutions and systemic corruption, and the lack of glamor/necessity of heart that comes with taking them to task.
Uglies will not last here; it’s content masquerading as a film and most everyone will be able to peer through the facade and subsequently prevent it from reaching any more significant heights. Rebel Ridge, however, will be remembered for its much more genuine impact. With any luck, Netflix will soon receive the memo that great movies are *checks notes* better than bad movies in just about every way, but until then, we’ll just have to be wary of the Uglies of the world in the hunt for our next watch. Venture safe out there, folks.