• Directed by Jonathan Glazer
• Written by Walter Campbell, Jonathan Glazer, Michael Faber
• Stars Scarlett Johansson, Jeremy McWilliams, Lynsey Taylor Mckay
• Run Time: 1 Hour, 48 Minutes
• Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J7bAZCOk0Sc
  

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

This is slow-moving, but we thought it was still entertaining. It’s visually beautiful and interesting. A lot is unexplained, but we were okay with that. It’s definitely an artsy, indie kind of movie despite having such a big name in the lead, so it’s not for everyone but the Horror Guys liked it.

Synopsis

We get long, lingering shots of an eyeball before the credits roll.

We cut to someone riding a motorcycle on a dark road. He stops and goes off the road to pick up an unconscious woman and put her in the back of a truck .

We cut to someone undressing the woman in a pure white room. The woman doing the undressing is naked as well, and she puts on the other woman’s clothes. We see that they have similar faces.

The woman then goes to a shopping mall, where she gets a fur coat and some lipstick. She stops her truck several times to talk to men alongside the road for directions. One guy admits he doesn’t have any family, so she lets him get into the truck. She eventually takes one home with her and they both undress. He then sinks into the floor and vanishes. What?

During the day, she watches a swimmer at the beach. He says he’s living in a little tent on the beach. She watches the man try to rescue a drowning man and his wife. They both die, and the man is upset, but our woman doesn’t seem to care much– she whacks him with a rock and drags him right past the dead man’s abandoned baby, whom she ignores. The man on the motorcycle then goes to the swimmer’s tent and collects the man’s stuff– and the baby.

She goes to a club and meets a single guy who ends up in the dark room with the magic sinking floor. We see the man sink into what looks like black tar, but beneath there, it’s like he’s underwater, but he can breathe and sees another man down there, the previous victim– until he sort of dissolves into nothing but empty skin.

The next day, she meets up with the man on the motorcycle and they stare at each other for a long time. Later, she’s walking down the street and face-plants into the pavement. She drives around all day, seemingly just watching people.

Next, she picks up a man with a disfigured face. She tries to seduce the ugly man, but he’s very suspicious. She has him touch her face, then her neck, and she compliments his hands. She eventually convinces him to go with her to the black room, and that ends just like the others. Later, we see him walking naked through a field outside of town– she released him. The motorcycle man catches up to him and finishes him off.

The woman parks on the side of the road and walks into a fog bank. She goes to a restaurant and has a slice of amazing-looking cake. She tries to take a bite and spits it up; food doesn’t seem to agree with her. Rather than getting back in her own truck, she takes a bus. She meets a man on the bus who takes her home with him. Neither of them has much to say, but he gives her her own bedroom and leaves her alone.

The next morning, they go for a walk and see an old castle. They stop for a romantic kiss inside. They go home, and she lets him undress her.

We see that the motorcycle man is out looking for the woman by this point, and he doesn’t look happy. She stops halfway through sex and looks at her pelvic area as if she didn’t know it worked like that.

She leaves him and goes out for a walk in the woods. She runs into a logger who tells her all about the trails. She finds a hiker’s shelter and goes inside as it rains. The logger comes in while she’s sleeping and tries feeling her up, but she runs off. He chases her, catches her, tears her clothes off, and then he tears her skin.

He runs off, and she realizes that her skin has been torn open. She removes her face, and she’s just a shiny, hairless black thing underneath. The logger comes back and pours kerosene on the alien and lights it.

The motorcycle man sees the smoke from her burning body.

Commentary

It’s a very visual, very artsy movie, with lots of lingering, colorful shots of… places and things. The woman acts oddly all through the movie, and then when she tries to eat, we see that maybe she’s not human. There’s almost no dialogue except when she’s trying to seduce men into her truck, so for most of what’s going on, you have to figure it out for yourself.

Scarlett Johanson was a fairly big star already by the time this was made, but this is definitely not a Hollywood production. She actually picked up most of the men off the street for real, and her questions for them were unscripted. They were told later that they were part of a movie.

It’s super slow-moving, but for some reason, it wasn’t boring. Still, I can definitely say that this one isn’t going to be for everyone. Other than the fact that the woman turns out to be an alien, nothing is really explained.