The Tribe

I wanted to like this, but knew it's be an uphill battle. Subtitles are hard enough sometimes, but this movie was straight up dialogue-free. Everyone in it was deaf and communicated through sign language, without subtitles, which inevitably left me completely in the dark as far as what was going on, which meant I paid less and less attention to it, which means the gap only widened, which means I was just reading the plot synopsis line by line every ten minutes or so on Wikipedia, and I really do wonder if I'd have even been able to glean what was happening had I paid full attention from the outset.

But still, that blame's on me, and I'd be at least a little annoyed with myself if the movie had been any good. It wasn't! It was all sex and violence and arthouse trash. The acting was terrible - and this was in a silent movie where all you need to do is emote well physically, present yourself a certain way, body language, come on folks, it's really not that hard. The whole thing was medium shots, too - where are the close ups? The movie had no interest in even letting us up close for face shots. I'm sure that was intentional - maybe it was meant to add to the distance we were supposed to feel from a group of people who communicate in a language we (presumably) don't understand. But come on, a two-hour silent movie about fucking and fighting, and I couldn't find a shit to give about any of the characters. Plenty of late night Netflix fodder bores or underwhelms me, but usually I can give it the benefit of the doubt. This was just bad.