The Marsh King's Daughter(2023)||Movie Review.

Casts

Daisy Ridley as Helena

We–the viewers– saw Helena grow from a ten year old girl to a married woman with a loving husband and a beautiful daughter. Helena was vicious and very brave right from when she lived with her father.

The little Helena didn't have the best relationship with her mother because her father made it that way. He always took her to hunt in the woods and whenever she made a kill, she got rewarded. Not with candy but with tattoos.

The little Helena demonstrated the innocence of a child living far from civilization; who knew only what she was told. The bigger Helena on the other hand clearly portrayed the sacrifice a mother was willingly to make to keep her family safe. In general, I would say that the character Helena did a good job.

Ben Mendelsohn as Jacob Holbrook.

Jacob Holbrook was referred to as the Marsh king for a greater part of the movie. The Marsh king was Helena's father and childhood idol. Jacob was a kidnapper and by extension, a murderer. Nonetheless, he always had a way of bending over the law.

Jacob broke out of prison a few years after he was convicted and decided that he wanted to start up another jungle family but this time with his daughter and granddaughter.

Ben played the role of a gruesome man who would stop at nothing when he wanted something or in this case, someone. He played the role pretty well.

My Opinion

The beginning of the movie had some suspense to it. The viewers were introduced to a family of three–a father, a mother and a daughter–living very far away from civilization. As such, the very question would be why? Why are they living out there? Was it a consensual decision between the two adults involved?

I like how real certain effects and scenarios were. Take the woods and the water bodies with green phytoplankton for instance. This sent the message that the Marsh king and his family lived in a place where people rarely visited and where visitors weren't exactly welcomed.

However, the screenplay wasn't really the best there could be. With a bit more emotions, the movie would have come out top notch. The characters knew the plot already but instead of acting as if they didn't know what was going to happen next, they rather made predicting the movie easier. I can't exactly count the number of times I predicted the next scene or next two scenes because of how bland a particular character's emotions were.

Nonetheless, there were scenes that stood out beautifully and the movie wasn't a total waste of time. One part that was really intriguing to see was the part where little Helena and her father went hunting together. You could tell that she loved her father very much and was receptive to whatever lessons he had to teach her whether good or bad.

Recommendation

On a scale of one to ten, this movie would be a 4/10 for me. The plot was awfully familiar and very much predictable. Nonetheless, it is a good movie if you're just looking to pass time.

All images used are screenshots from the movie and were taken for illustrative purposes except stated otherwise

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