I Kill Giants [2017]
"She's just a kid... She can't help, she can't help with anything"
I Kill Giants follows Barbara Thorson as she defies social norms, stands up to bullies, crafts wonderous items... and maybe even makes a new friend. All the while, young Barbara is preparing for a showdown that could cost her home town everything. But is it really the monsters she's preparing to fight... or something else?
With a wonderfully evocative color pallet, a score straight out of a 90's fantasy, and visual effects that are inconsistent at times but generally pretty exceptional; I Kill Giants was a fun, Wes Anderson esque visual ride... but that was about it. Clearly riding the coattails of the more efficient 2016 film A Monster Calls, Giants doesn't quite find its identity until the very end. We struggle to relate to Barbara, as her internal conflict is so obscured that we just see her as kind of a brat; a young teen acting out against her older sister and not getting along with kids at school because the people around her don't understand her hobbies. She's weird, but not necessarily in a quirky and fun way, just kind of an obtuse one. When the film does begin to reveal what's going on, however, our perspective is shifted and we end up liking her a lot.
The problem is that Giants is 1:46 long, and it feels closer to two and a half hours. Not necessarily do to density of material covered, but more to slow pacing and kind of empty scenes. This film was very nice to look at and I enjoyed my time with it, but I won't be returning to it any time soon. Maybe the comparison to the crushingly good A Monster Calls isn't fair, but the themes are so similar I can't help but see them as films built from the same universe.
Where Monster had meaningful dialogue and quotes that reached far beyond the film itself, Giants tries to have those moments but they mostly fall flat. The score swells, the camera sweeps in, and the sun flares across the lens... but the words just fall short and come across as a little vain. With a once or twice over on the script I think that I Kill Giants could have really been something to remember. Instead, it's just something to compare.
Giants isn't bad by any stretch, it's just a little corny and it's never quite great. As maybe a strange thing to say after all that, I DO recommend watching this film. Watch Giants, then, after a little time to digest, watch Monster. If you watch Giants first you will appreciate it much more for what it is, rather than loath what it isn't. Because what it is, is wonderful, if just a little forced and a little rough around the edges.
"If I stay focused... If I'm worthy, I can stop death itself."
