Netflix has welcomed its newest creation “The Mother” and I have to say, I’m not quite as welcoming. After watching this movie, I thought about everything I felt towards the movie but I realized I couldn’t, because I was bored out of my mind. I had just put a halt to my day to sit down and watch this two-hour movie, and in all one hundred twenty minutes, I couldn’t remember a thing about it.

The story follows an ex-assassin who comes out of hiding to protect her daughter she had left earlier in her life from monstrous characters of her past. If you’re thinking “Hmm… this sounds familiar,” it’s because it sounds like some rough version of thirty other movies released right now within this same movie genre.

This got me thinking- why do many adventure directors not take more chances? I don’t think these directors should be given an “excuse” for lazy creativity just because of the genre of movies they produce. I’m not trying to completely disregard the adventure/action genre, I can somewhat understand the appeal it has, but the repetitive nature of all the movies makes me question why people continue to watch them.

I must admit, I did watch this movie knowing I have a heavy bias for anything that’s not adventure/Marvel-like. But I tried my best to watch it from an exterior view, or maybe even a view that favors this sort of movie, and I still just can’t understand how anyone could be thematically satisfied after watching a movie like that.

Before writing this, I read some reviews to get a feel for how other people felt about what I’d just seen. Almost every review I read had described it as a movie they’d put on while doing things around the house, not completely paying attention. The fact that the plot is basic enough to where you could catch up on your math homework for thirty minutes and come back and understand what you missed within a minute is the perfect summary for this kind of movie.

They should’ve advertised it as a multi-tasking movie. That would describe the viewer, not the movie because as I’ve said, the movie itself wasn’t completing many tasks other than its one static plot. The dialogue was truly one of the most basic I’ve seen in a movie in a while. I think ChatGPT could write a better screenplay and plot.

The one thing I did appreciate was some of the risks it took with the cinematography. The daringly wide shots and jumpy edits surprised me at times but ultimately left me hungry for the other aspects of the movie to be that ambitious.

I have a movie theory that some may find very disagreeable, but perfectly describes a movie like this. I would rather watch an offensively, criminally bad movie than a painfully ordinary movie. When I go into a horrible movie knowing how bad it’s going to be, watching it is much more enjoyable, I can take it less seriously. But being forced to watch a movie that feels like ten other movies I’ve seen before, just makes me think of all the time I’m wasting.

If I still haven’t convinced you to not watch this movie, here is a list of three things you could be doing other than watching this movie that are much more entertaining and worth your time:

1. Watch a critically acclaimed adventure movie to avoid losing all faith in the genre. I would recommend something like “Black Panther” or “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-verse.”
2. Watch literally any other movie.
3. Ask ChatGPT to write a screenplay with the same plot as “The Mother.”