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Resolution Movie Review

Resolution is a 2012 horror film directed by Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead. It is a solid movie that could have been better overall.

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“Can we try it another way?“

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Drug addict Chris lives alone in a dilapidated shack. One day his friend Michael shows up. He wants to cure Chris of his drug addiction and unceremoniously puts handcuffs on him. However, scary things suddenly begin to happen. This movie is a lot. Benson and Moorhead clearly have always been very ambitious directors, but in this instance less should have been more instead of the other way around.

While the movie does benefit from a realistic, moving story of a struggling drug addict and how he initially refuses, but finally agrees to go to rehab, the addition of a supernatural entity into the whole proceedings did not appeal to me. It made for a chaotic film in tone and genres as the duo tried to do too much, but only succeeded in the drama department.

Whenever the characters had simple conversations, the movie shined. Chris is very annoying at first, but then you get to learn more about him and you start caring for him and his friends. The friendship angle is wonderful here. What I also appreciated is the film’s very honest depiction of drug addiction and how tough getting out of that can be.

But again, the horror elements did not work for me and this is a horror movie, so overall it was a miscalculated effort on the directors’ part to even include this storyline. I find them both perfect for Linklater-like dramas and it’s a shame that they never fully went into that territory.

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Resolution is well made for such a small budget and the acting is surprisingly serviceable, but the characterization is slim and it was important for them to be better developed for this type of story. The technical aspects are passable while the ending is messy.