Mark Duplass – Tripping Through Gateways

Bombshell is the dramatic recounting of the harassment scandal surrounding Fox News top guy Roger Ailes in 2016. Focusing on a wide eyed new Fox News employee Kayla Pospisil. An ambitious Conservative Christian, she finds her reality challenged as she starts to rise through the ranks, eventually becoming a victim of Ailes.

Robbie’s Popsisil is a composite character invented for the film. Robbie manages to be sympathetic in spite of her aspirations. Theron and Kidman do a good job disappearing into their famous roles, as does Lithgow.

The real MVP of Bombshell is the make-up, which made many actors near unrecognizable.

This being your standard “inspired by a True Story” fare, there is a lot of embellishment (outside of actual Fox News personalities, the central people Kayla interacts with the most are fictional, including Kate McKinnon’s Jess Carr).

The story playing out is pretty engaging, but the film seems unsure of what it wants to be. Is it a drama that indicts a sick corporate culture? Is it a satire of a sick corporate culture? Is it just the facts?

The main story is bookended by two very different set pieces. It opens with Megyn Kelly (Theron) giving us a tour of the Fox News offices. It closes with a Gretchen Carlson (Kidman) speech about sexual harassment in the work place.

Bombshell is largely well made, bolstered by excellent make up and good performances. But it’s lack of focus on what type of film it is trying to be definitely is a detriment.

If there is one story line that horror authors love to tell it is the one about the dangers of Scientific Hubris. Part of this is that the stories pretty much write themselves.

In the case of the Lazarus Effect, the scientists in question are trying to conquer death. After they succeed in resurrecting a dog, they lose their research to Big Pharma. So they break in to attempt to recreate the success and one of the scientists (Olivia Wilde) is accidentally killed. We can all see where this is going.

Upon being returned to life, her behavior becomes creepier and creepier and then progressively more violent. The turn is quite quick, it happens overnight.

The film is visually interesting, but the philosophical questions are treated in a way that feels pretty pedestrian. There is the scientist who has remnants of her religious upbringing causing her to wonder if what they are doing is very wrong (Wilde) and the scientist who thinks there is no spiritual afterlife, so only sees the potential (Mark Duplass).

The film never really asks big questions, and it never really addresses what it is that Zoe (Wilde) has become, or what her goal or purpose is, other than to be mean and cause mayhem. The Lazarus Effect is an interesting idea that seems lazily executed.

Tag: Mark Duplass

Hot News (Bombshell, 2019)

Scientists Shouldn’t Play With Dead Things (Lazarus Effect, 2015)