01 / Alps / Giorgos Lanthimos

Not a good way to start of the year... I went into Alps with extremely high expectations. I loved Lanthimos' first film, Dogtooth. But Alps just seemed to be lacking, in well pretty much everything. The film is about a group of people who, for a small fee, stand in for the recently deceased within their families to help the grieve. That central theme is an interesting one, but for me the film didn't quite know how to handle it or what it really wanted to say about such a situation. The whole thing felt kind of messy. But above that my main issue was the hollow feeling it left me with,  I didn't believe in any of the characters, or really care about them. So when it came to the climactic scenes, I was just left cold and uninterested.  Whereas Dogtooth wouldn't leave my mind for days, Alps left about half way through.