Chaos Walking Review: An Interesting Concept that Falls Short!

Chaos Walking is directed by Doug Liman and the screenplay is written by Charlie Kaufman, Jamie Linden, John Lee Hancock, Gary Spinelli, Lindsey Beer, Christopher Ford, and Patrick Ness. Yes, those are a lot of names, we don’t even know anymore who got the final say but these writers listed above at some point had a part to play in the construction of this screenplay.

Also Read: Coming 2 America Review: A Fun Watch!

Chaos Walking, is adapted from the book The Knife of Never Letting Go, in which Todd Hewitt (Tom Holland) is living in a town on a mysterious planet where there are no women. They have all been killed off by a mysterious bacterium, which also affects men by making their thoughts read aloud to anyone nearby.

Todd, while doing work for his father, comes across wreckage in the woods near his home and discovers a girl named Viola. As the people of the town begin to hunt Viola, Todd vows to protect her from those who wish to do her harm.

The first thing I wanted to address was a concern I heard by many, about the thoughts being spoken out loud. Personally, at the beginning of Chaos Walking, I found it quite disorienting and annoying taking me out of the narrative. As the movie goes on you adjust, and it ceases to be an issue as it disappears into the background.

If I could describe Chaos Walking in four words, it would be Classic Young Adult Film. This movie gives me Divergent and Maze Runner kind of vibes, and considering it’s based on a Young Adult novel, that makes quite a lot of sense. As mentioned before Doug Liman takes on the directorial job and does a nice job with the project.

Chaos Walking is a very ascetically looking film, and that can be accredited to the work of Ben Seresin (World War Z, Unstoppable, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen). The writing, on the other hand, wasn’t the best. It seemed like there were a lot of missed opportunities for what they could do with such an intriguing concept, which in my opinion, the final quite a bit short on. Chaos Walking was shot in 2017 and had an unsuccessful screening in 2019, and the film went under extensive reshoots. Several weeks and 15 million were spent on adjusting the movie’s final product.

Film’s that undergo such types of reshoots tend to not be the most cohesive and that is certainly the case here. To be completely honest and straightforward unfortunately not enough interesting things happen in this movie. Now with that being said, I can still definitely see people enjoying this film.

It has been popular with audiences but panned by critics. Personally, I enjoyed it enough. What I am trying to say is I didn’t love the film, and I don’t see it as anything special, but just like audiences I can sit back relax and have a bit of fun with Chaos Walking while also realizing from the critical aspect this film could and should have been a lot better and just wasn’t executed to its potential.

The performances here were alright. Tom Holland, Daisy Ridley, and Mads Mickelson were all just fine in this movie. They weren’t bad, and they weren’t great either. I think that shows more on the material itself than the talented performers bringing the script to life. All in all, Chaos Walking follows the same path of so many Young Adult series adaptions prior and lacks the substance needed to bring this compelling concept fully to life.

Rating – 3/5 | Grade – B

Review by Robert Arcidiacono
Follow Robert on IG – @arcmoviereviews