Poor Things

It’s now customary to kick off the first review of a new year by mentioning the fact that January is the time for all of the previous year’s worldwide (mainly US) releases to drop on these shores.

Whilst it’s great to have lots to look forward to in the first month of the year it’s frustrating that we lag so far behind sometimes.

This year feels particularly backwards, with plenty of UK ‘best of 2024’ lists set to resemble a lot of American publication’s ‘best of 2023’.

Poor Things is the first to drop and possibly, calling this now without seeing anything else so far, the best.

With awards buzz aplenty and lots of podium finishes on lists Stateside, the latest from Yorgos Lanthimos is set to hopefully attract some mainstream punters through the cinema doors to watch an arthouse film.

All I can say to that is, how exciting! This is sure to make the non-film buff masses at least ‘feel’ something. Whether outrage, disgust, horror, hilarity, revulsion, confusion, liberation, passion or sheer joy (or possible all of the above.)

This absurd, batshit, steampunk, ‘feminist Frankenstein’ dark comedy/coming of age/political and philosophical statement is like Barbie if Weird Barbie was the lead character.

Willem Dafoe's Victor Frankenstein-alike Godwin Baxter (cleverly shortened to God) resurrects a pregnant woman who jumps off a bridge, putting the infant's brain in the woman's body.

The subsequent creation: Emma Stone's Bella Baxter (deserving of every inch of praise bestowed upon her performance) must relearn everything about the world, raising prescient questions of nature vs. nurture, what it means to be human and other weighty topics.

It's all presented with such a light touch and surrealist flourish and is absolutely riotous, laugh out loud funny, visually stunning, stacked with incredible performances and a script that shouldn’t work when read aloud but contains multitudes and delivers its meanings and intentions with brute force.

A mention for Mark Ruffalo before wrapping up as well who gets some absolutely cracking lines here.

A film sadly very much not for everyone but that absolutely should be for everyone. An example of arthouse cinema that can smash misconceptions and break into a mainstream space (like Everything Everywhere All At Once before it), hopefully deliver a truckload of awards and bums on seats and change the face of mainstream cinema.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️