"The Discovery" Review
As intriguing as its premise is and all of the existential questions that come with it, "The Discovery" abandons the philosophical for the familiar. With cast members as terrific as Jason Segel (End of the Tour), Rooney Mara (The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo), Jesse Plemons (Breaking Bad and Fargo), and Robert Fricken Redford, the movie explores the depressing backstory of this one particular family. It relies heavily on the relationship between Segel and Mara's characters, but the movie, unfortunately, does a poor job of setting up these characters -not to mention the movie's two leads have little to no on-screen chemistry.
As mentioned already, the questions that The Discovery asks is fascinating and could've easily been a great symposium about existence when the afterlife has been proven to be real. About two thirds of the film focuses on this but it chooses to pursue a far less interesting and poorly written mystery that's supposed to result in some sort of solace after sitting through an hour and a half of impressionistic camera work and editing. As cool as the entire thing looks, it ultimately feels like a parody of a long-winded TV trope.