You Will Not Believe Serenity Is a Real Movie

I've got a real Sophie's Choice situation for you here: Serenity, the new movie out this weekend starring Matthew McConaughey and Anne Hathaway is, to put it mildly, the most deranged movie in theaters in some time. And Venom came out like, four months ago! However, explaining why is a huge spoiler—what makes Serenity interesting is the ridiculous twist it's hiding, one that's only kind of implied by its trailer—which mostly sets it up to be a pulpy thriller. So there's two options here: I can keep the twist a secret, and maybe you won't be interested, because thrillers like the one Serenity pretends to be are a dime a dozen and you don't have enough time in a day. Or I can give away the ball game and let you decide if what's in store is sufficiently wild enough that you have to see how it plays out.

So first: no spoilers. Serenity follows Baker Dill (McConaughey), a man who leads a solitary life on Plymouth Island, a fishing community where everyone knows everyone's business and there's only one bar. Dill's a single-minded kind of guy—like George Clooney in Up In the Air, he's got a number in his head and he's not gonna be happy until he hits it. Except in this movie, that number is a fish, and Dill has given it a name: Justice. Then his ex-wife Karen (Hathaway) arrives, with a request: Kill her new husband for a cool ten million dollars.

This is how this movie starts, and honestly? It's a fun trashy mess. McConaughey is playing things mostly straight as a man who prefers the isolated life he's carved out for himself, with only his first mate (Djimon Hounsou) and occasional hookup (Diane Lane) to punctuate his trips to the sea and the bar. Anne Hathaway, then, is a delightful agent of chaos, chewing scenery with the most over-the-top damsel-in-distress routine I've seen in some time, as Karen implores Dill to murder her abusive husband for the sake of the child he had with her. Rounding things out is Jason Clarke as said husband, playing the biggest scumbag of his career, complete with an accent and a smug demeanor and a deplorable appetite for torment.

January is a notoriously dry season for movies, and pickings are pretty slim. If you are fine with a strange film that doesn't particularly rise above okay, one that presents itself as one thing only to reveal itself to be something else entirely (Not something compelling, just....bananas.) then Serenity might be worth your time. If you need a little more than that, well....let's talk.

Alert: This is the part where I spoil the hell out of this movie.

Early on in Serenity—and even in the trailer—there's the slightest of suggestion that things are off. And boy, are they: that son that Dill and Karen have? He's repeatedly referred to as being reclusive and fond of games and making them. Turns out, this is really important: because he is making a game the entire movie, and it's the entire island the movie takes place on. That's right: Dill, Karen, and everyone on Plymouth Island are all just characters in a video game that Dill and Karen's troubled son is making to process the trauma of his abuse. Dill then, is modeled after his real-life father who died in the Iraq war, and Karen and her new husband are also his real life mom and stepdad. Karen's plea to Dill to kill her new husband and Dill's plight over whether or not he should do it? It's all just this sad kid sorting out whether or not he actually wants to murder his stepdad in real life.

I'd argue that knowing this twist doesn't really ruin Serenity, because the way the story builds to this truly bonkers twist has all kinds of absurd implications once you've seen how everything plays out. Serenity is a movie that's truly about the journey, not the destination. But when you put it all out there, the twist doesn't really elevate the film's quality, just its lunacy. The movie is a straight-up spectacle, one that you must see if you're into cinema-as-rubbernecking. If not, well, you can always catch the rental with some friends and edibles.