There are many great sins in movie making, but The Discovery commits the biggest one. Boasting a terrific premise with a stellar cast, the movie picks the worst possible angle to cover, undermining a great conceit and dragging great actors like Robert Redford under the bus. Seriously, Robert Redford!!! I thought he could do no wrong.
Philosophers, preachers, adults, children: hell, everyone would be riveted by Dr. Thomas Harbor’s (Robert Redford) discovery. Turns out, the afterlife exists. As a result, suicides have skyrocketed across the globe, forcing the doctor into exile. His son, Will (Jason Segel) is on a boat to the remote island where his father lives. On the boat, he strikes up a conversation with realist Isla (Rooney Mara), who is trying desperately to not fall into despair. Attempting to save her, Will invites Isla to his dad’s estate, where he continues to study the breakthrough he discovered 2 years earlier.
The Discovery makes the same mistakes as the first Purge movie. Please, hear me out. The Purge concept was awesome: one night a year where all crime is legal…..so let’s tell a story about a family trapped in a house. Wait, what about chaos on the streets? How does society react to the Purge? You just feel like you got gipped out of a great story. The Discovery’s basic story is the afterlife exists….so let’s study the guy who made the discovery. WHAT???? What happens to religion? How will world economies change? Will is a doctor; is medicine now an unnecessary profession? Nope, we have to see how Dr. Thomas proves the afterlife exists. Some of this probably has something to do with budgeting (Netflix bought the story), since showing global consequences of this discovery would take I assume significantly more money. At least show some aspect of society and how this information affected them; that would be more interesting than the story Charlie McDowell chose here.
But there’s deeper problems here. It’s as if Charlie McDowell left that pitch meeting and did nothing with the story. Then he signed all these great actors, and quickly wrote a movie completely built around lifetime level melodrama to keep the story going: “Oh the story’s getting boring here, let’s have someone close to the leads reveal to be dead.” It’s shot on this gray, dreary island, clearly missing the point of how happy this information would be to the millions who hate their current living situation, wallowing in inexplicable self important misery. Then McDowell had this epiphany of his twisty ending, which is pretty good, but it serves a story that makes you feel nothing for these characters because what you watched was boring and manipulative. You just go, oh huh, that’s interesting, and then the movie ends and hopefully you forget what you just saw.
Earlier I compared The Discovery to The Purge because it wastes a terrific hook. However, there is hope Discovery fans. The Purge sequels have very much surpassed the original, essentially forgetting how crappy the first movie is. Someone should run with the premise of The Discovery and open it up. I think you might have a classic on your hands, something akin to Steven Soderbergh’s Contagion.