Review:

There is a very distinct difference between not holding the audience's hand and purposefully neglecting them for the sole purpose of confusing them. Upstream Color isn't totally the latter, but it's very close. Even knowing the basic plot outline, I was still left constantly wondering "what is the purpose of this scene?", "Who is that? Are we supposed to know them?, and "Where are we? Is this real?". For an hour and a half long movie, Upstream Color feels like so much longer, mostly because it's simultaneously full of filler and extremely lacking in meaningful plot development. The first twenty-ish minutes are a series of 30 to 60 seconds scenes that only make any sense in a re-watch. Really, the entire film feels like what a big scale show like Game of Thrones puts together to play before the first episode of a new season to remind us what's happened so far, except this is a stand alone movie and you have to try and piece together what the movie is. Again, I can appreciate the movie not "holding my hand", but this goes way beyond that. It feels purposefully vague and unfinished for the sake of confusion. I don't think the acting was particularly noteworthy and the cinematography wasn't anything beyond generic. I know "film buffs" hate it when you call a movie pretentious, but Upstream Color really hits that for me. The plot is very interesting and I could see myself enjoying it if almost any other director made the movie, but Shane Carruth just didn't work for me.