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Is it a compliment or a slam to say that "Sundown" could be the saddest "Curb Your Enthusiasm" episode ever? 

The protagonist, played by Tim Roth , is a creature of selfishness, the kind who can surely be found in well-to-do neighborhoods all over the world. We're not supposed to like him or even particularly understand where he's coming from, and after a certain point, viewers may find themselves laughing at how blithely he throws away not just things, but people who theoretically should mean everything to him. After an introduction like that, you may find it odd that a review would urge you not to read further till you've seen the movie, but "Sundown" is more dreadfully engrossing if you know nothing about the story going in. So: make your choice. 

Roth's character, Neal Bennett, is on vacation in Acapulco with his sister Alice ( Charlotte Gainsbourg ), niece Alexa ( Albertine Kotting McMillan) and nephew Colin ( Samuel Bottomley ), in the lap of luxury, as it were. Then Alice gets a call informing them that their mother is gravely ill. The family cuts their vacation short, and on the way to the airport, Alice gets a second call telling her that their mother has died. 

The cherry on top of the misery sundae: when they arrive at the airline check-in counter, Neal shamefacedly says that he's left his passport back at the hotel. Distraught as the family is, they offer to stay at the airport and wait for him to fetch the passport so they can face the tragedy together, on a later flight. Neal assures them that it's better if they go on without him and let him catch up.

Then Neal gets into a cab and tells the driver: hotel . Not a particular hotel: any hotel. And his vacation continues, without the family. He drinks beer and sleeps on the beach. He hangs out in markets and meets a beautiful young woman and takes her back to his room and has sex with her. Days pass, then weeks. His texts and voicemail fill up. His sister wants to know where he is, and if he's OK. He does not respond. Yes, he's lost his mother—but so has his sister, and she isn't abandoning the family in time of need. What's going on here? A need to blow it all up? To reject the privileges accumulated over a lifetime, as other fictional characters, including some of Michelangelo Antonioni's bored rich folks, and Don Draper on "Mad Men," sometimes did?

We are belatedly informed that the siblings are fabulously wealthy, thanks to their co-ownership of pork-rending facilities (though Alice does most of the work, it seems). Around that point, things take a nasty turn, with the Bennetts seemingly being punished, or maybe being subjected to karmic payback. But the misfortune is staged in such a way that we can't be sure if it's the cosmos rearranging itself on the side of the workers and against capitalist piggishness or if the family just caught a string of bad breaks. 

In the greater scheme, it's preferable for a film to leave us unsure what to think about its message. Most (though not all) movies that go an agitprop direction are condescending, flat, and annoying, and make you wonder why the storytellers spent the time and money to make a drama rather than, say, renting a billboard. But if you go too far in the other direction, as I think this "Sundown" does, you leave the audience unsure as to what, exactly, the storytellers are trying to say about their people, their milieu, and their subject.

This in turn leads to the question of whether there's some larger purpose behind the enterprise, or if the filmmaker just enjoys composing impeccable frames with a jerk at the center of them, watching him do bad things, then punishing him and letting the audience off the hook by feeling as if some form of justice has been done. This film's portrayal of upper class white Europeans is hardcore-leftist in presentation, but the execution is bourgeois, like an old gangster film that ends with the gangster getting machine-gunned to death on the steps of the church whose teachings he used to mock.

"Sundown" is written and directed by Michel Franco , a Mexican filmmaker whose work is steeped in a kind of cool blank regard of suffering that can read as nihilism, and perhaps should be read that way, though it's hard to tell for sure. The filmmaker behind art-house horror shows set in the real world, such as " New Order " and "Daniel and Ana," as well as hard-edged social dramas like "Through the Eyes" and " Chronic " and the sexually explicit coming-of-age movie "After Lucia," he's been accused of exploitive imagery and scenarios even as he's been praised for going places that most movies don't dare go.

He's on record as being a fan of Michael Haneke (" Funny Games ," "Cache") and shares that director's affinity for treating people as the emotional equivalent of insects for a cruel boy to dismember, along with an icy, no-judgments tone that (deliberately?) makes the audience wonder if he really does have substantive things to say about the awfulness that he shows us, or if he's mainly there for the awfulness, and the gestures towards sociopolitical statements are mainly a pretext for transgressive images.

"Sundown" won't clear up any of those mysteries, such as they are. And even as the movie takes a slight turn into surrealism in its final third, and becomes more overtly political as it steams towards its ending, the sum is slight and obscure. At least the running time is brief, and the movie has the good sense to cast Tim Roth (also the star of "Chronic"). Few actors are better at conveying reptilian stillness and opacity, and encouraging us to wonder what on earth is going on behind those alert yet distant eyes, as well as the motivation behind the set of a character's mouth, which might be either a grimace or a smirk.

Now playing in select theaters.

Matt Zoller Seitz

Matt Zoller Seitz is the Editor at Large of RogerEbert.com, TV critic for New York Magazine and Vulture.com, and a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in criticism.

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Film Credits

Sundown (2022)

Tim Roth as Neil

Charlotte Gainsbourg as Alice

Iazua Larios as Bernice

Henry Goodman as Richard

Albertine Kotting as Alexa

Samuel Bottomley as Colin

• Michel Franco

Director of Photography

• Óscar Figueroa

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‘Sundown’ Review: What Is Tim Roth Doing in Acapulco? The Answer May Surprise You

Michel Franco reteams with his ‘Chronic’ star for another tough contemporary drama, this time slyly counting on viewer prejudices to shape the experience.

By Peter Debruge

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In the span of a year when everyone’s been on edge, prolific Mexican director Michel Franco managed to nuke our comfort zones not once, but twice, delivering separate provocations at back-to-back editions of the Venice Film Festival . In 2020, he won the Silver Lion for powder-keg thriller “New Order,” and now, he returns with the relatively understated — but still shocking — “Sundown.” While both are icy examinations of violence, inequality and explosive class conflict in contemporary Mexico, Franco could hardly be accused of repeating himself. Where “New Order” was in-your-face, “Sundown” returns to the controversial auteur’s earlier, arm’s-length approach.

The movie unfolds entirely in Acapulco, where a man ( Tim Roth ), a woman (Charlotte Gainsbourg) and two grown “kids” (Albertine Kotting McMillan and Samuel Bottomley, who appear to be just shy of drinking age) are shown consuming: They swim; they sail; they eat out at posh restaurants where the waiter brings out the steaks for your approval before cooking them. These four are a family, but perhaps not in the way audiences might think. If you’re confused by how they relate, or why they behave as they do, rest assured, that’s Franco’s intention.

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The high-minded director’s most successful film to date, conceptually speaking, “Sundown” is an intricate, unconventional puzzle — a mystery, complete with murder, in which the solution isn’t nearly so important as the process of putting it all together. Franco is deliberately stingy with details early on, confident that viewers will leap to their own conclusions, and in so doing, their personal prejudices (a loaded term but not necessarily a negative one) will shape how they view the situation. As more information comes out over the movie’s short 83-minute running time, audiences will not only understand the story better but ideally themselves as well, recognizing how false assumptions may have affected their initial reading of certain elements.

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Take the first twist: The vacation is going fine until Alice Bennett (Gainsbourg) receives a call. From the little we gather, it seems as if her mother has been rushed to the hospital. Alice insists that everyone pack and head to the airport, receiving an update en route that devastates her. She passes the phone to Neil Bennett (Roth), who isn’t nearly as upset by the news. When they get to the check-in counter, Neil “realizes” that he has forgotten his passport, telling the others to go ahead. Then he hails a cab and takes it to a cheap hotel, thereby extending his vacation.

Roughly an hour later — a couple weeks in story time — Neil is stuck behind bars, and a representative from the British consulate poses the proverbial million-dollar question: “Why didn’t you go home for your mother’s funeral?” Unpack the consul rep’s wording carefully, and at least one connection becomes clear. But the point remains: What kind of man lets his family handle such an ordeal on their own?

In the interim (and it’s important not to reveal too much here), Neil has been spending his days at the beach, drinking Dos Equis and soaking up the sun. He makes friends with the busboys and makes love to Berenice (Iazua Larios), a local shopkeeper whose spirit seems a million times lighter than whatever weight Neil is carrying on his shoulders. How should we feel about his behavior? As in all six of his previous films, Franco withholds judgment, but this time, he encourages us to fall for the most superficial of stereotypes, then obliges us to reconsider as new intel comes in.

While nearly every filmmaker working today is trying, at some level, to create a pleasant experience for audiences, Franco is committed to challenging them. “Sundown” is no exception: The director’s mission is to throttle us out of our comfort zones, which he does by downplaying the more melodramatic aspects of his stories (putting him in the company of Michael Haneke and Ruben Östlund), using a style certain to frustrate and divide.

Over the years, Franco has come to recognize a certain elitism among the film-fest and art-house crowds that turn out for his movies, and he plays our presumed privilege to his advantage here — weaponizing our concern, as it were. Do we empathize with the Bennetts? When a character is shot dead mere feet from Neil on the beach, how do we react? What does that say about us?

As the Bennetts — millionaire heirs to a slaughterhouse fortune and attractive targets for gang scouts known as halcones (“hawks”)  — Roth and Gainsbourg deliver performances at opposite ends of the spectrum. Neil comes across nihilistically detached, whereas Alice is histrionic. He’s a passive zombie. She screams; she sobs; she makes proactive decisions. She also calls and texts constantly. What would she think if she could see what we do? We’ll soon find out, but again, she knows things that we don’t, and vice versa. Their lack of healthy communication skills is one of the film’s themes.

Perhaps Franco could be accused of the same, but there’s a difference between ambiguity and confusion, and the director is aiming for the former. This far into his career, working in a consistently withholding register, he understands that audiences project themselves in the vast spaces between clear answers — one reason so much depends on the first viewing. Yes, “Sundown” is a mystery, but it’s also a Rorschach test. No two people will see the film the same way.

Reviewed online, Sept. 4, 2021. (In Venice, Toronto film festivals.) Running time: 83 MIN.

• Production: (Mexico-France-Sweden) A Teorema production, in co-production with Luxbox, Commonground Pictures, Film I Väst, with the support of Eficine - Producción. (World sales: The Match Factory, Cologne.) Producers: Michel Franco, Eréndira Núñez Larios, Cristina Velasco L. Co-producers: Jonas Kellagher, Caroline Ljungberg, Hédi Zardi, Fiorella Moretti. Executive producers: Tim Roth, Lorenzo Vigas.
• Crew: Director, writer: Michel Franco. Camera: Yves Cape. Editors: Oscar Figueroa Jara, Michel Franco.
• With: Tim Roth, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Iazua Larios, Henry Goodman, Albertine Kotting McMillan, Samuel Bottomley, Jesús Godines. (English, Spanish dialogue)

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‘Sundown’ is a Devastating and Honest Probe of Life with Grief

With his latest movie, Sundown , writer-director Michel Franco ( After Lucia , New Order ), delivers a fearlessly honest take on grief, love, and the human condition. The drama probes deep and at times devastating questions about familial relationships that complicate notions of what we do and do not owe one another in the face of tragedy.

Tim Roth , in a typically splendid performance, plays a British man named Neil, who vacations in Acapulco with his sister Alice ( Charlotte Gainsbourg ) and her two children. The movie begins with the four lounging on the beach, sipping alcohol at an expensive resort. In the little time we get to spend with Alice, we see her preoccupied with an impulse to work. The children playfully bring Alice away from her phone, urging her to be more present and play games.

On the surface, Roth appears more present in some ways. Emails and work calls seem to be nowhere on his radar, for example. Yet he feels off. He is passive and aloof. His body may be there, but his mind is elsewhere.

Their trip is soon cut short after the family learns Alice and Neil’s mother has died. Just as they arrive at the airport and prepare to walk through customs, Neil says he forgot his passport at the resort. He tells them to go on without him. He will get the next flight.

But instead, Neil checks himself into a cheap hotel by the beach. He decides to stay in Mexico. Indefinitely. The movie tells us very little about his thinking or reasoning. The questions raised by his sudden abandonment are never fully answered. We may only infer if we feel so inclined.

Sundown captures the sounds of Acapulco: the indiscernible chatter of beachgoers, the clink of glasses, the waves. Neil, for his part, hardly talks. We hear what the character hears as he drinks, lounges, and eats by the beach. Days or weeks may be passing. Eventually, Neil falls in love with a local shopkeeper, Bernice ( Iazua Larios ). The two hardly talk. And we learn far too little about Bernice. Their relationship feels more physical than verbal, as it relates to both sex and the more general desire for companionship.

Among the central tensions of the movie is the one between Franco and his audience. The filmmaker does not relent in his decision to provide little to no explanation for Neil’s actions. There is no grand monologue. No inner struggle makes its way to Neil’s lips, for example, nor does one play out across his face. Instead, he just keeps living. He gets lost in the repetitions of his new, and in some ways simpler, life in Acapulco. Thus, the interplay is between what we think as we watch and what we think Neil thinks as he lives.

Franco leaves the audience to grapple with Neil’s moral complexities, guiding us nowhere. We live in the moral gray area of Neil’s actions. There are times when we cannot believe his selfishness. And at other moments, we empathize with his loss and mental state — is he not allowed to grieve and exist in his own way?

The subtleties of Roth’s performance seamlessly walk this tightrope. We may experience a range of emotions with the movie but are never bored, even during many of its slowest moments. As Neil just continues to drink, and sit, and make love, and walk around, Sundown  can be funny. But there’s a sadness to the whole ordeal that never wanes.

As time passes by, we learn more about Neil’s life. He has no other immediate family. He loves his niece and nephew very much. And he is the co-heir to a sizable fortune and his family’s meatpacking empire. As a result, all of this makes Neil’s decision more complex.

His class opens a window into how and for whom society allows room for introspection and grief. Only a person of means could do what Neil does. The time, space, and energy to reflect and embody one’s own mind is a privilege few can afford. Modern life makes little room for such simple needs. Neil’s unfettered access to wealth, for instance, gives him a rare chance to tap into his own humanity in his way. And while we cannot ignore his selfishness, there’s a part of us that years for this freedom too.

We feel the presence of Neil’s gender throughout the whole ordeal. His decision to just walk away and do as he pleases feels endlessly masculine. He leaves his sister alone to bury their mother and run the businesses. If he loves them so much, why just abandon him? No easy answer can be found. His actions are simultaneously infuriating and deeply sad.

By the movie’s end, more tragedy strikes. We get a partial explanation for Neil’s behavior. But it doesn’t make us feel any better. Instead, we are left grappling with the nature of time itself. How do we spend the years we have on Earth? Do we owe anyone our time? Or is it ultimately all our own?

What  Sundown  makes clear is that the answers to these questions may vary depending on the person and circumstance. The inevitable fact, though, is that each choice has a consequence, good or bad. And intention aside, we will live with them for the remainder of the time we have left, no matter where we go.

Sundown hits theaters in the United States on January 28, 2022.

Related Topics: Michel Franco

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Sundown Reviews

This is a sliver of a story, told quickly, but it lingers like sunspots on the backs of your eyelids as your eyes close, tired by looking out to sea.

Full Review | Sep 16, 2023

Franco’s cinematic character study explores the reasons for the self-imposed exile with a show-don’t-tell style that should have cineastes celebrating the lack of prose dumpers disguised as characters.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Aug 16, 2023

In Sundown, Michel Franco presents an irresistibly visible film, in which every step plants the seeds of intrigue and mystery. [Full review in Spanish]

Full Review | May 15, 2023

Michel Franco delivers a harsh and disturbing film, with a nihilistic drift... [Full review in Spanish]

Full Review | May 8, 2023

Slowburn, then bonkers

Full Review | Dec 30, 2022

Franco has never had any fondness for privilege, or much for human nature; with his latest penetrating film, he's as unforgiving as always, but also as committed to unpacking what it means to define your own path.

Full Review | Jul 17, 2022

There’s a sense of dread running through this deeply discomfiting – but gripping – character study.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Jul 12, 2022

It may actually be too grim, as I was left feeling disturbed and depressed, and not necessarily in a way that highlighted anything unexpected about the story...Whether audiences find "Sundown" enlightening or enraging, it's sure to leave an impression.

Full Review | Original Score: 6/10 | Jul 11, 2022

The admirable thing about Roth’s deceptively downbeat performance and Michel Franco’s unobtrusive direction is that you’re always with Neil, even though you’re never quite sure where he is.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Jul 6, 2022

It eats away at you, with Roth leaving just enough space and ambiguity in his character for the viewer to fill in the blanks with their own perspective and experience (at their own peril).

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5 | Jul 1, 2022

The chronicle of a trip to nowhere and, also, of an abandonment, of a renunciation, of an unexpected and inevitable flight in the face of emotional and existential boredom. [Full review in Spanish]

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | May 31, 2022

Neil is a simple man in a complex moment, a millionaire who doesn't want money, a brother who wants to emancipate himself, a lover who embraces sex to feel something. Anything. Because if you feel something, you're still alive. [Full review in Spanish]

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5 | May 26, 2022

A film so alive, everything changes contently, life in life, keeping us prisoner in its enigmatic mastery. [Full review in Spanish]

Full Review | Original Score: 5/5 | May 26, 2022

The drama simmers, releasing bursts of tension. A sudden explosion may ensue... or maybe not. [Full review in Spanish]

Full Review | Original Score: 4.5/5 | May 20, 2022

Sundown is both as mean as Franco’s reputation suggests and as compelling.

Full Review | Apr 13, 2022

Sundown is a movie that will have you talking long into the evening.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Apr 8, 2022

Multiple twists raise Sundown’s shock value in what is essentially a character study of a man at the end of his tether; it’s heady and unsettling, and challenging.

Full Review | Apr 8, 2022

Director Francos quietly thrilling follow-up to the controversial New Order is an about-face but a riveting one, exploring its protagonists slide into another kind of life for reasons that must be teased out by the viewer.

Full Review | Original Score: A- | Apr 7, 2022

Like the recurring image of an empty chair, the film acquires more power once it's gone and you're left to grapple with a dawning awareness of what just happened.

Full Review | Mar 21, 2022

I can't say I'd describe it as a hopeful film, then, although it is a curiously palliative one.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Mar 3, 2022

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Common sense media reviewers.

Strong drama about judgment and perception; sex, drinking.

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this movie.

No clear message, but one possible interpretation

No clear role models here: Characters behave in wa

Takes place mostly in Mexico, but movie is mainly

Two brief, strong scenes of violence. Shooting on

Full-frontal male nudity in prison shower. Graphic

A few uses of "f--k" or "f---ing." Also "motherf--

Characters drink liberally throughout: cocktails,

Parents need to know that Sundown is a drama about a man (Tim Roth) who walks away from his family after a tragedy and starts a life of leisure on the beach in Mexico. It's a quiet, keenly-observed movie that's possibly meant to challenge viewers' perceptions and judgments. It includes two brief, violent…

Positive Messages

No clear message, but one possible interpretation is that the movie challenges viewers to check and recheck their own judgments and expectations.

Positive Role Models

No clear role models here: Characters behave in ways that serve only themselves, and they do so as a necessity of the story. That said, while it might be easy to be appalled by Neil's behavior, by the end, viewers might find sympathy for him. Money is also a key factor in the movie: For some characters, money is very important; for others, not so much.

Diverse Representations

Takes place mostly in Mexico, but movie is mainly about a wealthy, privileged White man and his family. Latino characters who are included vary in depiction from criminal to kind. Berenice, who becomes Neil's lover for a time, remains somewhat mysterious and isn't fully fleshed out.

Did we miss something on diversity? Suggest an update.

Violence & Scariness

Two brief, strong scenes of violence. Shooting on freeway includes windows being shot out and dead bodies. Sudden, violent shooting on beach; gun, dead body shown. Blood in water. Character hit in the head with empty beer bottle. Character collapses, falls down stairs. A death in the family, funeral, etc., discussed. Caught fish still alive, gulping for oxygen. Dead pig in bloody puddle.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

Full-frontal male nudity in prison shower. Graphic sex scenes, with thrusting, etc. Topless female in more than one scene. Viewers are meant to think that the main character is being unfaithful, but he's not.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

A few uses of "f--k" or "f---ing." Also "motherf----r," "a--hole."

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

Characters drink liberally throughout: cocktails, beers, etc. Character adds extra booze to his drink. Drunkenness or hangovers are rarely depicted. Character takes prescription pill.

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Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that Sundown is a drama about a man ( Tim Roth ) who walks away from his family after a tragedy and starts a life of leisure on the beach in Mexico. It's a quiet, keenly-observed movie that's possibly meant to challenge viewers' perceptions and judgments. It includes two brief, violent shooting sequences, with guns, blood, and dead bodies shown. A man is hit in the head with a beer bottle, and someone collapses and falls down stairs. Death is discussed. There are graphic sex scenes, a topless woman is shown, and several fully naked men are seen in a prison shower. Language includes a few bursts of "f--k," "f---ing," and "motherf----r" and one "a--hole." Characters drink liberally throughout -- cocktails at first and then many, many beers -- but drunkenness and hangovers are rarely depicted. To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

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Sundown - A Slow Burn

What's the story.

In SUNDOWN, a wealthy family of four is on vacation in Mexico, relaxing in a luxurious hotel. Then Alice Bennett ( Charlotte Gainsbourg ) receives a call and learns that her mother is gravely ill. She decides to cut the vacation short, and orders her grown kids, Alexa (Albertine Kotting McMillan) and Colin (Samuel Bottomley), to start packing. At the airport, Neil ( Tim Roth ) rummages for his passport and mumbles that he forgot it. In the ensuing confusion, he slips away, catches a cab, and asks to be taken to a hotel ... any hotel. On the phone, he lies to Alice about how he's trying to get his passport situation squared away, but instead starts lazing on the beach, drinking beer, and hanging out with local shopgirl Berenice (Iazua Larios). What's going on with Neil?

Is It Any Good?

This quietly sharp, deeply observant movie is about human nature, both the characters' and the audience's. It plays with our judgment and preconceived notions with a confident, even-handed touch. Written and directed by Michel Franco, Sundown begins almost lazily, with scenes that seem unimportant. The family members sleep in the sun, swim, float in the pool, drink cocktails, etc. They eat dinner and argue about a game and try not to look at their phones. The trick here is that Franco wants us to assume what their actual relationship is, and it's likely that most will guess wrong. It's on us to keep checking and rechecking our assumptions and how they relate to what's actually happening.

The movie's opening scenes are merely a test for what comes later. Can we retain sympathy for Neil after he's run out on his family, avoided a funeral, and shirked his duties (even after Alice specifically asked him for help)? Can we retain sympathy for him as he begins to live a life of ease and pleasure? It helps to employ Ted Lasso's "Be curious, not judgmental." Perhaps Neil is dealing with some kind of fear surrounding death or funerals? Something else? Either way, Sundown keeps viewers on their toes, with a rhythm that both relaxes and shocks. It pulses and breathes. And Roth, who's in nearly every shot, gives a bold, measured performance that's one of his best.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about Sundown 's violence . How did it make you feel? Was it exciting? Shocking? What did the movie show or not show to achieve this effect? Why is that important?

How is sex depicted here? What was your initial reaction to Neil and Berenice sleeping together, compared to what's actually happening?

How is drinking depicted? Is it glamorized, shown as an essential part of a life of leisure? Are there consequences for drinking? Why is that important?

Money doesn't seem to be very important to Neil, who gives up most of his inheritance. Do you feel the same way? Why, or why not?

How did you feel about Neil over the course of the movie? Did you ever decide that you didn't like him? Did you change your mind? Why?

Movie Details

• In theaters : February 4, 2022
• On DVD or streaming : February 17, 2022
• Cast : Tim Roth , Charlotte Gainsbourg , Iazua Larios
• Director : Michel Franco
• Inclusion Information : Female actors
• Studio : Bleecker Street Media
• Genre : Drama
• Run time : 83 minutes
• MPAA rating : R
• MPAA explanation : sexual content, violence, language and some graphic nudity
• Last updated : October 8, 2022

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Sundown review: tim roth shines in beautifully shot, but meandering drama.

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I'm so happy inside out 2 restored pixar's best cameo tradition after 5 movie drought, 10 mcu roles that were perfectly cast (& the actors who almost played them).

Writer-director Michel Franco’s Sundown follows a similar trajectory to his previous films, observing dysfunctional families and integrating Mexico’s socio-economic politics into the narrative.  Sundown seems to indicate that the audience should simply observe over judging, but as one simply observes Tim Roth's Neil, the film's main character, viewers are most certainly called to judge Acapulco, Mexico. In the end, what could have ultimately been an interesting character study surrounding Neil's behavior lands with a thud in Franco's latest.

Sundown follows Neil Bennett (Roth), a wealthy man on vacation with his sister, Alice (Charlotte Gainsbourg), and her kids (Albertine Kotting McMillan and Samuel Bottomley) in Mexico. The trip is pleasant enough until a distant emergency cuts the trip short. Tensions rise when a family member disrupts the tight-knit order, exposing the instabilities within this wealthy British family.

Related: The Fallout Review: Jenna Ortega Stuns In Deftly Handled School Shooting Drama

Franco’s film does little to spell out the narrative with words and dialogue at the beginning. Instead, the filmmaker opts for a visual language that paints the Bennetts as a loving, tight-knit family, but with one very obvious crack in the façade. Without getting too much into it, as the experience of the film hinges upon not knowing anything, the disconnect lies with Neil. A random scene indicates what may be wrong, but the payoff for that comes far too late. Neil is always framed as being shockingly out of place. If it isn’t his extremely pale skin or his bright white shirts, it's the intense apathy Tim Roth projects in almost every scene. 

Sundown  is an actor’s showcase type of movie. Neil, on paper, is awful. He acts casually callous towards his family and is seemingly unfazed by the disruption he has caused. Roth’s performance, however, has an eerie calmness to it that is unsettling and fascinating. He moves through this film seemingly aimless, but one is never quite sure of the depths of Neil’s intentions. He could easily be a man on the verge of a mental breakdown or a sociopathic killer on the prowl. That “I can’t quite put my finger on it” quality of acting is something that Roth has perfected for years, but what has always been immensely clear is that Roth works with subtleties that are almost imperceptible on camera. Only moments after a scene has come and gone is one struck by what was portrayed. Not many actors can pull off such a feat. Furthermore, a shift in dynamics later on in Sundown  exposes a sincerity that is jarring and presupposes that Neil is not lacking empathy. Roth manages to cast all assumptions out the window at the drop of a hat, leaving viewers wondering if they will ever truly understand his character.

Yves Cape’s cinematography paired with Franco’s languid directing makes for a great case for why one would vacation in Mexico, but the calm and serene backdrop only makes for an unsettling experience. This is especially the case when Franco, without any subtlety, highlights the brazen crime that plagues the city. With Alice inquiring about the safety of a hotel Neil stays in, to a bold assassination in broad daylight on the beach, and an extreme act of violence in  Sundown's third act, Franco does not want the audience to forget that the peaceful paradise has a dark underbelly.

Franco’s work has never shied away from depicting the inequalities and troubles of Mexico, but with a narrative that centers on a selfish and rich white man, Sundown  makes for an uncomfortable watch. The callous depiction of violence and its perpetrators, in particular, create a distasteful atmosphere.While the film is strikingly beautiful and the many shades of Acapulco are shown to the audience, very little is done to shine a light on Neil. He is a man that has abandoned all sense of self and reason and the audience is never clued into the reasons for why that is. One can assume this is his form of an existential crisis, but with little work done to craft an internal logic or to simply explain the extreme apathy, Neil becomes increasingly hard to understand. 

Ultimately, Michel Franco’s Sundown feels hollow and too nihilistic for its own good. As it winds down, one is left wondering what is the purpose. What is Franco attempting to have viewers think and feel? With little to go on in terms of character and narrative, all that one is left with is a vastly underdeveloped locale that is based on glorified fears and anxieties about tourist violence. The final act offers something of an explanation based on a prior (and seemingly unrelated) scene in the opening act, but once that is revealed, it is much too little, too late.

NEXT:  A Hero Review: Oscar-Winner Asghar Farhadi Offers Another Stunning  Drama

Sundown  releases in theaters on Friday, January 28. The film is 83 minutes long and is rated R for language, some graphic nudity and sexual content.

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‘Sundown’ Review: Michel Franco’s Chiller ‘New Order’ Followup Is a Deadpan Existential Mystery

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Editor’s note: This review was originally published at the 2021 Venice Film Festival. Bleecker Street releases the film in theaters on Friday, January 28.

The characters in Michel Franco ’s “ Sundown ” are on a luxurious Mexican holiday in which they swim in the clear sea and their private infinity pool, take a regal interest in the local singers and cliff divers, and lie flat out on sun loungers on their hotel suite’s terrace while a waiter brings them their morning margaritas. It’s relaxing for them, but absolutely nerve-frazzling for anyone who saw Franco’s last film, “New Order,” a traumatizingly gory drama in which a high-society wedding turned into a bloodbath, and things got more stressful from there.

Sure enough, it doesn’t take long for trouble to come to this particular paradise, but “Sundown” is quieter and more oblique than “New Order.” It’s smaller, too, in terms of its cast and its scope. That film’s merciless depiction of a city imploding in revolution and counter-revolution thrilled some viewers and offended others, most vocally in Franco’s native Mexico. His enigmatic follow-up is more likely to prompt puzzled conversations about what he’s getting at.

Tim Roth stars as Neil, an unshaven, middle-aged Londoner who appears to be in this tropical resort with his wife and children. Mini-spoiler alert: they’re actually his sister, played by Charlotte Gainsbourg, and his grown-up niece (Albertine Kotting McMillan) and nephew (Samuel Bottomley). When someone rings them to say that Neil’s mother is at death’s door, the family rushes to the airport, but when they get there, Neil says that he doesn’t have his passport. He sends his sobbing, raging loved ones back to Britain without him, and promises to be on the next flight.

In fact, his passport is in his bag. He seemed to get on well with his relatives, but instead of following them, he takes a taxi to a cheap hotel by the beach in Acapulco, and proceeds to loaf around. When he is feeling energetic, he pads to the sea for a paddle in his flip-flops, shorts, and T-shirt. When he isn’t, he slumps on a plastic chair on the sand, knocking back bottles of cold beer as the waves lap over his feet. If “Sundown” were ever to spawn a drinking game in which viewers tried to match Neil beverage for beverage, it might be fatal.

Between this and Mia Hansen-Love’s Bergman Island, there is evidence to suggest that Roth currently picks roles that require him to kick back in scenic locations for a week or two, and who can blame him? But Neil’s motives are harder to fathom. He is happy to exchange pleasantries with a pretty local shopkeeper, Berenice (Iazua Larios), and whenever his grieving sister calls him, he assures her that he is busy trying to obtain a new passport from the British consulate. Otherwise, he says almost nothing. He doesn’t explain himself, and he doesn’t show signs of having any plans that stretch further than the next cerveza. Nor does he seem to be either elated or pained by the deceit. Roth’s expressions range from slightly dazed to slightly drunk, and so, as the days drift by, “Sundown” becomes a liberating blend of mystery and existential deadpan comedy. Some viewers will be exasperated by Neil’s blank, Bartleby-like refusal to justify his behavior; some of the characters certainly are. But it is funny to see someone so content to do nothing, and a film so willing to indulge him. And there is tension, too, especially for “New Order” survivors. Why has Neil abandoned his responsibilities? Is he having a breakdown? And how long can Franco keep us in this limbo?

The mystery is solved by the end of the film, but it would be wrong to give any more clues to its solution here. One of the pleasures of “Sundown” is that it is impossible to guess where it is heading — and it heads in some bizarre directions. But it is fair enough to say that, as in “New Order,” there is violence and social unrest, and there are dealings with the authorities. The twist is that Neil’s detached mood rarely changes, and nor does the film’s. A shooting is given no more emphasis than a game of dominos; imprisonment seems no different from sitting on the beach.

The viewer is kept at a distance from the characters, but that distance is more intriguing than alienating: rather than being in the thick of events, we’re catching tantalizing glimpses of them. Franco has developed a minimalist style which makes his films seem like brief summaries of themselves. He constructs them from short scenes with small scraps of dialogue, with hardly any music or flashy cinematography, so although the pace can feel lackadaisical, he can get through three Hollywood dramas’ worth of events in one low-budget indie drama’s running time. In “Sundown”, the end credits start rolling after 75 minutes, but an astounding amount has happened.

But what does any of it mean? Possibly Franco’s constantly surprising and slightly frustrating film is concerned with the question of whether you can escape your past. Possibly it is concerned with mental health. Undoubtedly it’s concerned with the divide between the rich and poor. One of the few things that Neil says with any conviction is that he doesn’t care about money, but that’s something that only people who have money tend to say.

“Sundown” premiered at the 2021 Venice Film Festival.

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‘Sundown’ Film Review: Tim Roth Is an Enigma in Riveting and Banal Mexican Drama

Director Michel Franco lets his story unfold incrementally and mysteriously

This review of “Sundown” first published on Sept. 5, 2021, after its premiere at the Venice Film Festival.

In “Sundown,” his latest examination of how his country’s economic and social tensions sometimes explode, Mexican director Michel Franco takes a cold-eyed stare at his characters, even as the Acapulco sun beats down on them.

In the film that premiered last fall at the Venice Film Festival, Tim Roth and Charlotte Gainsbourg play British tourists holidaying in a gorgeous Banyan Tree resort, accompanied by two late-teen or early 20s kids named Alexa and Colin. They swim and eat and lounge around, getting served margaritas by their private pool, venturing out to eat dinner or watch a cliff-diving exhibition in which local men risk their lives for the visiting galleries before passing a hat for donations.

Gainsbourg is chided by the kids for always being on her phone working, until it rings with some terrible news which means they have to leave immediately. Gainsbourg squeals in pain on hearing the news, then hands the phone to Roth to deal with it by talking to a man called Richard who will “sort things out”.

After that, I don’t really want to tell you much more, except that Franco lets his story unfold incrementally and mysteriously, like a fisherman slowly reeling his catch out of the water.

His camera is blank, distant and so is Roth’s character, Neil, a taciturn, unreadable, unbothered chap whose motivation we will spend the rest of the movie trying to piece together, using every scrap of information to form a bigger picture.

The detached calm of the camerawork will be punctured by sudden outbursts of violence, sometimes physical but also emotional. The viewer remains taut and on edge, constantly scanning the wide frame of the composition for clues, on the lookout for what might happen next. I guess that’s how tourists are told to be in Acapulco.

To reveal almost any of what happens – or has happened – would be some kind of spoiler. But it would be a stretch to tell you to relax, that all will be revealed, because it won’t, not everything. Franco presents us with a puzzle, perhaps attempting to reflect the many impulses, divisions and complexities in how Mexico functions, especially in a tourist enclave such as Acapulco. “Is it safe?” Gainsbourg asks anxiously.

Roth, unconcerned, is particularly good here. If we can barely read Neil’s thoughts, Roth’s physical performance is floppy and loose-limbed, giving Neil an unhurried trudge and a long face that’s hanging on to its bones enough to form the expression of someone who’s encountered a bad smell. He moves with a graceless ease, so relaxed in his surroundings he’s practically supine. In contrast, Gainsbourg is all angles and restless energy.

If we can’t fathom Neil’s actions and reactions, he looks perfectly unruffled in whatever he’s doing, hardly communicating with any locals (he speaks not a word of Spanish and mostly just says things like, “OK” and “It’s fine”) and coming across as disinterested as the camera that’s tracking him. Neil gets through a lot of beer, though nothing seems to give him much pleasure.

We wonder if it’s existential ennui or a moral alienation that’s afflicting him. Or could it be something mental or physical, a condition we can’t see that makes him so passive and uncommitted? It’s not even clear if he really is miserable or if Neil’s always been a bit like this.

I’m being as opaque as Neil, which is ironic given the cool clarity of Yves Cape’s pin-sharp cinematography. You can see why Franco has earned comparisons with Michael Haneke, the director for whom Roth starred in the 2007 shot-for-shot American remake of his Austrian home invasion chiller, “Funny Games.”

“Sundown” is perhaps closer to “Code Unknown” or “Hidden” in the way threat simmers in the air but is never signaled — no minor notes approaching on an accompanying score, the only music coming from passing mariachis on the beach or from a beautiful singer in a restaurant. And in the family holiday dynamic, I was also reminded of Ruben Ostlund’s “Force Majeure,” without the ski boots.

With Roth and Gainsbourg, the film has every chance for good exposure, but “Sundown” is only a short film, just about making it over 80 minutes, every second of which manages to be simultaneously riveting and banal.

Yet its intensity burns like the sun which makes Neil’s skin blister, peeling off a layer we hope might reveal more. Franco is scratching away at the surface, too, making the sort of movie you come away from with questions, wondering if you’d blinked and missed something.

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In Twist-Filled Drama 'Sundown,' Tim Roth Reveals His Shadow Self

This vacation turns south fast.

Where to watch: ‘Sundown’ is now playing in select theaters and available to rent on Digital Platforms.

When it first begins, Sundown slows you down to its wonderfully relaxing, worry-free vacation time. The sight of Tim Roth endlessly lounging in a luxurious resort overlooking a beautiful Mexican coastline had me enjoying every gorgeously serene and sun-drenched moment (and made me remember his other vacation film, 2021’s Bergman Island ). Then, Sundown ‘s darker story begins to unfold, and the shadows begin to loom large. Soon enough, I also remembered the other side of the fantasy that vacations offer: escaping from your current circumstances, and yourself.

Related: In ‘Bergman Island,’ An Artist Couple Confront Their Love on the Coast

Unless anybody spoils the story for you (don’t worry, I’ll spare you any overly- revelatory details here), you’ll have absolutely no idea what to expect in this twist-filled, thrilling drama. Heading into Sundown as blind as possible really will make for the best viewing experience. Although even I knew a tad more than I would’ve liked to have known before going in, I was still entirely unprepared for what Sundown  had in store.

Written and directed by Michel Franco  (2020’s New Order ), Sundown  is a slow-burn film that follows Neil ( Tim Roth ) on vacation in Mexico with his family, Alice ( Charlotte Gainsbourg ), Alexa ( Albertine Kotting McMillan ), and Colin ( Samuel Bottomley ). When an unexpected emergency summons them all back home to London, the family must cut their trip short and hurry to the airport. It’s a tense moment, made even more heart-dropping when Neil realizes that he’s forgotten his passport back at the hotel. Unable to join them on the flight and now separated from his family, he hops into a taxi. When the driver asks where he’s headed–and it’s here where the film gets interesting– Neil simply requests to be taken to a hotel– any  hotel.

Puzzled, we’re left trying to make sense of what’s going on in Neil’s head by studying his calm demeanor and blank, expressionless stares (the film definitely hints that something’s on his mind, with shots of him staring vacantly into the ocean and pools). Neil proceeds to aimlessly walkabout in his flip-flops, having beers on the beach, and even meeting a local, Berenice ( Iazua Larios ). While Alice continues to try to contact him, Neil continues to deceive and avoid her calls. We’re now fully only along for this mysterious ride, and the  Sundown only dials up the heat from there.

Writer-director Michel Franco patiently divulges every piece of new information, which ratchets up the suspense in every scene. Neil’s avoidance really gets under your skin–a cinematic sunburn–when you consider how easy it would be for any one of us to do exactly that. We’ve all had fantasies where we imagine leaving our old lives behind, impulsively staying on that never-ending vacation. Sometimes it’s in the pursuit of enjoying the pleasures that the world has to offer, other times it’s for deeper, more twisted and complex reasons. Like avoiding sinister truths that we can only attempt to outrun for so long.

Franco teases out the rest of Neil’s larger story so well, and especially in regards to how he shoots the film. Yves Cape ‘s (2012’s Holy Motors ) beautiful cinematography consists of widely framed shots, immersing and hiding Neil in his surroundings. The enduring images in Sundown are of Neil slumped over in various lounge chairs, staring vacantly into large bodies of water (the ocean, a hotel pool, it makes no difference). Also, from behind, in three-quarter, and side-profile shots (there is always a side of him we’re not seeing). Franco uses the idea of the sun and the shadow to further symbolize Neil’s internally conflicted state. Neil stays mostly in the shadows of his hotel room or on the beach, except for a sprinkling of moments where he’s head-on in the scorching sunlight.

Tim Roth is truly exceptional here. As Neil, Roth gives a mostly quiet, internal, and understated performance. The longer Neil remains unwaveringly relaxed under these distressing times, the tension grows to wildly unexpected new heights. We eventually learn about Neil’s history and his family’s global significance as an affluent business, which reveals Neil’s strange behavior. With Sundown , Roth continues to re-emerge onto the film scene as an unsettling, pathological figure (look for him as an unnerving villain in Resurrection , which premiered at Sundance this year). Just by sipping a beer, or even while doing nothing, Roth radiates an unnerving quality who seems to be possessed by the question: what is peace? Is it the sustained feeling of happiness, or can peace just be what’s left when you’ve outrun the darkness?

Related: Sundance: Rebecca Hall Unravels in Psychological Thriller, ‘Resurrection’

If you’re intrigued, and in search of a smartly-written film that starts as a slow-burn drama before ending up as a head-spinning, jaw-dropping hallucinatory fever dream of a film, then look no further than Sundown . Led by an incredible performance by Tim Roth, Sundown  is one of the most unexpected, gripping, and utterly arresting dramas I’ve had the joy of seeing recently.

1h 22m. ‘Sundown’ is rated R for sexual content, violence, language, and some graphic nudity.

Ryan is the editorial manager of Cinemacy, which he co-runs with his older sister, Morgan. Ryan is a member of the Hollywood Critics Association. Ryan's favorite films include 2001: A Space Odyssey , The Social Network , and The Master .

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Sundown Ending Explained: What has happened to Neil?

Sundown plot synopsis.

If you have seen Sundown , Michel Franco’s existentialist drama which was released in 2021, you may have been left with a few questions. It’s a puzzling movie and one that isn’t necessarily easy to understand.

Tim Roth stars as Neil Bennet, a middle-aged man who, as the movie begins, is seen staring into the ocean. It is clear from this opening scene that Neil is not a happy chappie but the reasons behind his discontent are hazy at best.

Where is Neil at the start of the movie?

Neil is vacationing with his sister Alice and her two children, Colin and Alexa, in Acapulco. With the exception of Neil, everybody seems to be having a good time. But then tragedy strikes back home and after receiving this upsetting news, Alice tells everyone to pack their bags so they can catch the first plane back to London.

When they get to the airport, Neil discovers that he has lost his passport. He tells his family to go on without him and promises to follow on the next flight after he has found the missing document.

Does Neil find his passport?

No, and for one very good reason: it wasn’t missing in the first place. So, what is going on?

At the early stage of the movie, we can’t be entirely sure. For some reason, Neil has decided to stay behind in Acapulco. After leaving his family at the airport, he books himself into another hotel, becomes friendly with Jorge, a local taxi driver, and begins a romantic relationship with a woman named Berenice.

When Alice calls him to find out when he will be returning home, he tells her that it won’t be too long. However, this is likely a lie as it would appear that Neil has no intention of leaving the Mexican beach resort.

Why does Neil stay in Acapulco?

It could be assumed that Neil has a good life due to the meat processing business that has made the Bennet family very wealthy. But as we all know, money isn’t the root of all happiness.

During the early part of the movie, it would appear that Neil stays in Acapulco to find some kind of fulfilment in his empty life. He might be rich but this clearly hasn’t made him happy. This could be the reason why he has decided to stick around but an event at the end of the movie opens up another possibility.

Later, Alice returns to Acapulco to look for Neil and when she finds him, she confronts her brother about his decision to abandon the family during their difficult time. Neil isn’t able to give a convincing reason why he decided to stay behind, which is as frustrating for Alice as it is for the viewer.

Does Alice convince Neil to come home?

Neil decides not to go home. After discussing the family business with Alice, he decides to hand over his assets and inheritance to her and signs a document in the presence of his lawyer to finalize this.

On her way back to the airport, Alice’s car is attacked and she is shot and killed. One of the shooters is Jorge, the taxi driver that Neil befriended, and when the police investigate, they assume Neil may have hired these criminals to kill his sister.

Neil is arrested and imprisoned for his suspected involvement but is later released.

Did Neil plot his sister’s death?

We can’t really say for sure but as Neil is already very wealthy, it is unclear why he would. There would be little need to kill her for financial reasons and as he seemingly had no other motivation to want her dead, it is doubtful that he would pay to have her killed.

It is likely that Jorge and his men opened fire on the car so they could kidnap Alice for ransom. Jorge presumably heard Neil talking on the phone about his family fortune and this likely gave him the reason to go after her. If this is the case, Alice’s death was probably accidental.

Ultimately, it is left to the viewer to decide as, like the scene at the end of the movie, the reason behind Alice’s death is left open to interpretation.

What happens to Neil?

After the police release Neil, he continues to spend more time with Berenice. He also meets with Colin and Alexa and gives them the rights to the family business.

A few days later, he has a vision of a dead pig and then falls down the stairs of his apartment.

Berenice takes him to the hospital where she discovers he has brain cancer.

Neil then leaves Berenice at the hospital and starts to walk the streets of Mexico alone.

The movie ends with an empty chair near the beach and Neil’s abandoned clothes scattered around it. This obviously leaves us with one question…

Where is Neil?

We don’t know. However, it is likely that Neil has killed himself after abandoning his clothes and walking into the sea. His brain cancer was probably the reason for this as it may be that he saw little future for himself. This might also be the reason why he decided to live out his last few days in Acapulco, not only to enjoy his final few moments on earth but to shield Alice and the rest of his family from his impending death.

The title of the movie also clues us into this. Just as the sun goes down as night falls, so too does our life when the darkness of death beckons.

Neil is distant throughout much of the movie and the reason for this is probably the crushing inevitability that his life, like the sun, is about to fade.

This is our interpretation of the ending but if you have answers of your own, please share your thoughts by leaving us a comment below!

Read More: Sundown Movie Review

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22 thoughts on “sundown ending explained: what has happened to neil”.

I think the whole point of the movie was Neil was allergic to bacon and that’s how his family got their fortune.

Thanks for your thoughts Lori. Yes, it is a weird movie. A good one though, despite its abstract nature.Thanks for getting in touch.

I gotta say that was one weird movie. But my guess is that was his sister and niece and nephew and not his kids.He knew along he had cancer and wanted to keep it from his family not to upset them.He wanted to live his last days out enjoying himself with out a pity party from his family. He truly wanted his sister and her children to have the inheritance because he really did love them and knew he wouldn’t need it.Im not quite sure of the end though wether he truly committed suicide or is just going to live out the rest of his days alone.

If he knew he was dying why ask for more money ? No one to leave it to? Dont you think when he went into a state even the girlfriend , pigs etc were his brain and dementia ? Just a few thoughts

It is obvious that Neil had everything planed from the mothers death all the way to his sisters death. Hence him and Alice were the sole benefices of the family fourtune, he gives everything to Alice and then have her killed. Remeber she asks him about seeing the kids at the signing he says yes.. So he knew once Alice was out the picture the kids would have to come there to sign documents, and that’s when he knew he would see them. Also through out the movie on several occasions you see him, the taxi driver, and gun men together. Everything was set up at the first meet and greet, he then left the money for the hit in his room hence his luggage getting stolen. As for his relationship with Bernierce they were alreay a couple, he met her long before the vacation. You have to remember he is a billionaire so being decrete is of importance so he kept her a secret, but after he separated from his family, losing his passport he went to her, making it seem like they had just met. But as time went on they were very open not caring who saw them, they were already in love. That’s why when she found out about his cancer she was devasted. Because she had not had much time with him. It’s sad money is the root to all evil. Lastly if you paid attion to the detail at the signings he only received monthly pay outs of 10,000, but at the signing with the kids he asked for 100,000 up front. He knew they wouldn’t be thinking straight. This all tthe way around is just messed up! So sad‼️

Thanks for your thoughts Dave. The film is quite baffling, perhaps needlessly so at times. I still thought the film was okay but it could have been clearer.

The movie is so vague, including the relationship between Alice and Neil, since at first, it appeared to look like they were a couple, and that both Alexa and Colin are also Neil’s children as well. The reason being is because if Neil is capable to “lie” about his own passport, then he is also capable to lie about his relationship with Alice. Where was Neil’s introduction about Berenice to Alice? Neil had every opportunity to explain to Alice through the phone he met a nice lady- and he did not, he just ignores her calls completely as if she never existed. If Neil and Alice were brother sister then how come Berenice was not introduced to anyone? And why the stoic reaction as soon as he found out about Jorge’s involvement to Alice’s demise? Maybe he was involve in Alice’s death so that he can receive a bigger pension, as he was present when a murder happened at the beach. And what is more baffling is the fact that my first impression was that it was Alice’s mother who had died, since it is only natural Neil would care less if it’s the in-laws or the wife’s side of the family who had passed. That is part of the reason why she came back to see him. The fact that she mention kids upon her argument with him, ‘Don’t you want to see your kids?”, or something along the lines of that! Anyways, I can’t really recommend a movie that asks more questions than it answers?

I strong believe that Neil just want to avoid confrontation with death and his mother’s death was the turning point. He just decided to take control of his life in his way. Nobody in his family knew about his sickness and he wants to keep that way. The end clarifies his intentions; he doesn’t want anybody that he loves to share his grief, so he decides to abandon Berenices and find a secluded place to live the rest of his days.

When I heard his lawyer mention his “condition” I thought he was talking about autism, which would explain why he had no emotional connection to any drama that was going on around him, then when it was discovered that his cancer had spread to his brain, then I felt that the cancer was a reason for a complete personality change. Altogether a very thought-provking movie. It reminded me of L’etranger by Albert Camus, about a man who went to prison because he didn’t cry at his mother’s funeral.

The point you all missed is that he’s obviously banging his sister and those are his kids. The guilt is what the movie is about his cancer is of no importance because he feels he deserves it. The kids know all the seedy details

Hey, thanks for your comment. That’s really helpful to know – I hadn’t come across the term ‘sundowning’ before. It does change my perception of the story. Thanks so much!

First, I think there are some insightful theories in this post what was going on with Neil. I think Neil did have some (maybe subconscious) guilt about the family business, and what the fate was for these animals. In fact, the movie starts out with him looking at the fish on the boat gasping for air. The whole ‘pig’ thing confused me until I read the previous comments. I thought there really was a pig in the mens shower, lol…

It is possible that you are missing something. Which makes the movie a completely different watch.

“Sundowning”. This is the term where people with dementia get confused when the sun sets and into the night. They can lose speech, go wandering.

He knew he had tumours. The visions he had were part of that. It’s not clear whether the rest of the family knew or not. Sometimes I think they did. Other times not, and just knew he wasn’t happy.

But often the times he’s just standing there, he’s sundowning. He meets Berenice in effect that state. Other times he’s just zoned out. It’s the slow horror and visions we are not yet seeing. The time of the day of the scenes come with this.

I realised this after the movie had finished, when the titles were rolling. Perhaps I will rewatch it soon.

I think the cancer spread to his brain and it made Neil unable to feel normal human emotion.

These commentators may have missed some things, Neil wasn’t married, he knew about his cancer all along as noted by the Dr in Mexico, the pigs play a huge part as the family fortune is from slaughtering them—hence guilt. So the empty chair is a suicide walk into the ocean. Not a huge mystery.

It’s all about swimming with the pigs, a new and extravagant Mexican excursion. Also, the lawyer knew about Neil’s brain cancer because he mentioned early in the movie about Neil’s ‘condition’.

thanks for your thoughts 🙂

I don’t think he knew he was dying from the beginning, although that is an interesting thought and might want to make you want to live the rest of your life without worries on a beach. I think he was simply unhappy with his life and marriage, and didn’t care about money. But life has a funny and cruel way of surprising you when things seem to be going “well”- so surprise you have brain cancer now! Too bad your end has come.

Thanks for your thoughts. The pigs were an unusual inclusion but more clarity as to their meaning would have been helpful. I guess we are supposed to make up our own mind.

When his sister returns to Mexico, I think, why doesn’t she ask if he is depressed? I think the whole movie would have been fine without the pigs or knowing what the business actually was. That knowledge and the dead pigs adds another layer, but that layer isn’t leaned into enough to warrant it being there.

Je pense qu’il s’est senti étouffé. Mais je ne sais pas si cela est lié à ses actions dans le film. Point intéressant cependant.

Il y a une image au début du film, sur des poissons en train de s’asphixlifier.. peut-être s’est-il toujours senti comme cela. Pas seulement à ce moment de sa vie. J’ai eu envie de le voir très noir. Et se penser qu il aurait pu être l organisateur. Pour une fois. C est toujours la soeur qui decide. C zst quand même étrange cette série de morts. Je vais trop loin?

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Official Discussion - Sundown [SPOILERS]

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Neil and Alice Bennett are the core of a wealthy family on vacation in Mexico until a distant emergency cuts their trip short. When one relative disrupts the family's tight-knit order, simmering tensions rise to the fore.

Michel Franco

Tim Roth as Neil

Charlotte Gainsbourg as Alice

Iazua Larios ass Bernice

Henry Goodman as Richard

Samuel Bottomley as Colin

-- Rotten Tomatoes: 71%

Metacritic: 69

VOD: Theaters

Sundown (I) (2021)

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Sundown: The Vampire in Retreat Streaming: Watch and Stream Online via Amazon Prime Video

By Silki Joshi

Sundown: The Vampire in Retreat is set in a bizarre desert town where vampires grapple with a new reality, coexisting with humans. This horror comedy is all about adaptation, and societal change and offers satire questioning the nature of progress.

Here’s how you can watch and stream Sundown: The Vampire in Retreat via streaming services such as Amazon Prime Video.

Is Sundown: The Vampire in Retreat available to watch via streaming?

Yes, Sundown: The Vampire in Retreat is available to watch via streaming on Amazon Prime Video .

A secluded desert town, Purgatory, hides a secret, it’s entirely populated by vampires struggling to adapt to a world bathed in sunlight. Their leader, Count Mardulak, promotes peaceful coexistence with humans thanks to artificial blood and advanced sun protection. However, tensions rise when a rebellious faction, led by Ethan Jefferson, seeks a return to the old ways. Caught in the middle is a human engineer, forced to repair the failing blood supply and navigate a brewing vampire civil war.

The movie features David Carradine as Count Jozek Mardulak, Bruce Campbell as Robert Van Helsing, Morgan Brittany as Sarah Harrison, Jim Metzler as David Harrison, Maxwell Caulfield as Shane Dennis and Deborah Foreman as Sandy White in the lead.

Watch Sundown: The Vampire in Retreat streaming via Amazon Prime Video

Sundown: The Vampire in Retreat i s available to watch on Amazon Prime Video. Amazon Prime Video is a streaming service offering a vast library of movies and TV shows. Included with Prime subscriptions, it unlocks a world of entertainment to blockbuster hits and cult classics.

You can watch via Amazon Prime Video by following these steps:

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Amazon Prime is the online retailer’s paid service that provides fast shipping and exclusive sales on products, so the membership that includes both this service and Prime Video is the company’s most popular offering. However, you can also opt to subscribe to Prime Video separately.

NOTE: The streaming services listed above are subject to change. The information provided was correct at the time of writing.

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Review: Even Julia Louis-Dreyfus can’t make ‘Tuesday’ not feel like a Monday

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What comes after death is arguably the great unknown of humankind, making grief and the afterlife endless subjects for storytelling. How to visualize death, perhaps most famously realized in Ingmar Bergman’s “The Seventh Seal,” has likewise long haunted filmmakers. In “Tuesday,” the feature debut from U.K.-based Croatian writer-director Daina O. Pusić, death becomes a macaw.

Yes, a macaw. As the bird goes about his work, waving a wing over those whose time is up, it changes size, growing to larger than human scale or shrinking to hide in a young woman’s ear. Also it can communicate with people. There is something both unnerving and a bit silly about the idea — the creature is voiced and performed by actor Arinzé Kene, augmented by CGI — and the film places an unbalanced amount of attention on the bird. If it is meant to be the big innovation and motivating element of the rest of the film, it simply does not hold up.

Julia Louis-Dreyfus would like to talk about death

In her new movie, “Tuesday,” and on her “Wiser Than Me” podcast, Julia Louis-Dreyfus goes deep on a subject we all must confront — how things end.

June 7, 2024

This means that the film’s human story, where its interests should more properly lie, winds up feeling shortchanged in the face of so much focus on the macabre macaw of death. Zora ( Julia Louis-Dreyfus ), an American woman living in London, is struggling to come to terms with the imminent death of her daughter, Tuesday (Lola Petticrew), who has a terminal illness.

Pusić isn’t much interested in the details of the backstory or how these characters ended up in these circumstances, which works both to the film’s benefit, keeping it very focused on the moment, and also to its harm, with too many distracting, dangling questions about the bigger picture. The movie feels like an adaptation of a short story that has been pushed to the edges of its literary map, struggling to expand beyond.

Much of what does work in the film revolves around the performance of Louis-Dreyfus. She has long been a master of a certain kind of aggrieved resignation, the feeling that the forces of the world are somehow conspiring to make her day worse. In her work with writer-director Nicole Holofcener in “Enough Said” and “You Hurt My Feelings,” she found a more dramatic register, albeit one still rooted in comedy. Here, the allegorical absurdity of the situation draws upon her comedic reserves, in contrast to the seriousness of a woman in denial about her daughter’s impending death. Louis-Dreyfus fluidly blends the conflicting emotions together.

With “Tuesday,” Pusić shows great promise as a visual storyteller and director of performers. Yet it is in her work as a screenwriter where the film falters. Without the power and nuance that Louis-Dreyfus brings to the role, the drama would not have nearly as much spine or impact as it does. There still isn’t much need to make a date with this “Tuesday,” more an oddity than a revelation.

'Tuesday'

Rating: R, for language Running time: 1 hour, 51 minutes Playing: In wide release Friday, June 14

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‘Summer Solstice’ Review: Through Thick and Thin

A triumph of sensitivity, Noah Schamus’s debut feature tracks a rural reunion between old friends struggling to recover their bond.

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By Natalia Winkelman

“When I look at you, I see an old friend,” a voice croons over the credits of the delicate relationship drama “Summer Solstice.” Much like the film in which it features, the song (by Margaux, who contributes original music) is an aching ode to love worn thin, gesturing at how time and changes in circumstance, life planning or self-perception can deepen bonds, or erode them.

A triumph of sensitivity from the first-time feature filmmaker Noah Schamus, “Summer Solstice” tracks two college friends who reunite for a weekend in the verdant valleys of upstate New York. It’s been a while, and when Leo (Bobbi Salvör Menuez), a shy actor, and Eleanor (Marianne Rendón), an attention-seeking teacher, initially meet at Leo’s apartment, the pair have not seen one another since his transition.

Eleanor was once the popular girl; Leo, her doting sidekick. Now on the brink of 30, the old friends should have a lot of catching up to do. But Schamus gracefully shows how, as the summer days wear on, Eleanor neglects to acknowledge Leo’s personal growth and instead grasps at the fraying threads of their old dynamic. That thread finally snaps, with two outside witnesses to its wreckage: the queer friends Joe (Yaron Lotan) and Oliver (Mila Myles, a heartthrob whose chemistry with Menuez cries out for a sequel).

It’s difficult to discern what Leo saw in Eleanor; she mostly comes off as a bossy mess. But perhaps that characterization is deliberate: In declining to put us under Eleanor’s spell, Schamus is able to focus on coaxing out the magic in Leo, a onetime wallflower just beginning to bloom.

Summer Solstice Not rated. Running time: 1 hour 21 minutes. In theaters.

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Why you should be watching ‘the watchers’.

The feature debut of 24-year-old Ishana Night Shyamalan has divided critics, but there's more going on beneath the surface than it seems.

By Richard Newby

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[This story contains spoilers for The Watchers .]

As an artist, it’s no easy task to define oneself, to showcase a perspective and style that differentiates you from others. And it’s always that “other” that looms large, impacting your and everyone else’s perceptions of you. This is certainly the case for Mina (Dakota Fanning), a young, directionless artist whose car breaks down in the ancient woods of Ireland where she finds herself lost, in more ways than one, in The Watchers , based on the novel by A.M. Shine.

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The way we are watched influences our behavior. Even when we’re told “just to act natural,” there is an element of performance. This is something Mina quickly finds out, despite her initial resistance, when she is ushered into The Coop by Madeline (Olwen Fouere), where she meets two other captives, the naively optimistic Ciara (Georgina Campbell) and the emotionally unstable and enigmatic Daniel (Oliver Finnegan).

I’ve long been fascinated by code-switching, how people alter their language and behavior around different groups of people. It is a performance and a recognition that we are being watched, judged and chastised or applauded for our behaviors. It’s an act of self-preservation that typically has its roots in both race and culture. It’s clear early on that the Watchers are not same race, culture, or even species as those residing within The Coop. Thus, Mina, Madeline, Ciara, and Daniel alter their behaviors when being watched, becoming more deliberate in their actions, less relaxed, if such relaxing could even be done in this scenario, and they quickly fall into a certain pecking order with Madeline falling into a protective, mother-like position and the other three as children and siblings who cower and move cautiously behind the steadfast Madeline. But a film is not only about who we see on screen, but who is behind it as well.

As a young Indian-American filmmaker in Hollywood dubbed “the next big thing,” surely there was some pressure to perform according to expectations, professionally and at the box office. While it’s conjecture, based on what The Watchers grapples with, there is a sense that Ishana Night Shyamalan, who has likely witnessed the highs and lows of her father’s career, is considering the full conditions of what it means to be watched. This is showcased in the way she handles these characters and their sensitivity to being boxed in, exposed, and having their stories judged.

So just who or what are these mysterious Watchers in the woods? It’s important to remember here, as I think many failed to do with M. Night at a certain point in his career, that The Watchers is more than just a horror movie. It’s a modern fable, a fairy tale that arguably goes beyond what Shine’s novel conveys because of the difference in perspective the medium of film can provide. The Watchers are faeries, or changelings — creatures from Irish folklore who can change their faces and bodies to reflect humans.

Once, they lived in harmony with the humans, were worshipped as gods, and became willing mates to humans and produced offspring, halflings. Then, humanity began to fear their differences, their powers of change, and the capability of their children. So, they locked the faeries deep underground. They spent centuries crawling their way up to the surface, shedding their wings, and beautiful forms to emerge as the monstrous, twisted-bodied Watchers, not content to live among humans but to study and replace them. It’s this aspect, that seems to have lost some people. Yet, it is essential to fully appreciate The Watchers and the perspective the film offers.

Humans are always fascinated by humans who are different than them, until they covet what they have and in turn fear it, and the possibility that miscegenation will erode their existence. As a result, homes are destroyed, toxins pollute the air, and the indigenous inhabitants of the land are either pushed out or trapped in increasingly smaller spaces: coops. This is the history of the world, now and then, and it is perhaps made more digestible through the lens of horror and fantasy, and easier to accept when seen through the eyes of a young white woman. Whether a fully conscious effort, The Watchers feels like a purposeful attempt from a young filmmaker to look at the world she’s grown up in, influenced as much by her father’s work and the history of her culture, as by the new cycle that defined her generation.

It seems Ishana Night Shyamalan is committing to this very conceit with The Watchers , embracing several storytelling tenets that make her father the filmmaker he is, as it is an inherent part of her artistic lens. She is recognizing and announcing herself as more than an imitation, but her own filmmaker whose influence we can recognize but whose artistry we should define on her own terms, regardless of the weight her name carries. In doing so we can look at how her experiences and historical knowledge, of her family, and beyond it, have shaped the cautionary optimism of this fairy tale that ultimately sees Mina free, though not unstudied and not unjudged. It’s an invitation to keep watching, to witness how this voice and lens develops throughout a career, and as long as Ishana Night Shyamalan continues to make films, that’s exactly my plan.  

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'Inside Out 2' review: The battle between Joy, Anxiety feels very real in profound sequel

For teens, those who aren't yet teens, and anyone who was once a teen, the Pixar sequel “Inside Out 2” hits like an amusing, profound wrecking ball.

The original animated 2015 comedy “Inside Out” took audiences into young girl Riley’s complex mind and showcased a bevy of colorful emotions trying to keep it together for the kid’s sake, crafting an uncannily relatable movie in the process. Directed by Kelsey Mann, the next chapter (★★★½ out of four; rated PG; in theaters Friday) grows up alongside the newly minted teen and imagines the internal struggle, for all of us, when anxiety takes control.

The first "Inside Out" ended with Riley turning 12, and the sequel catches up with her (now voiced by Kensington Tallman) – as well as her core emotions Joy ( Amy Poehler ), Anger (Lewis Black), Sadness (Phyllis Smith), Fear (Tony Hale) and Disgust (Liza Lapira) – a year later. Riley has gone through a growth spurt, got braces (Disgust must have loved that day) and two besties, plus is a hockey star.

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The high school coach (Yvette Nicole Brown) sees her play and invites her to a skills camp – do well there and she could be playing as a freshman beside her super-cool idol Val Ortiz (Lilimar). The night before, however, Riley’s mind is thrown into disarray when Joy and Co. notice the red “puberty” button flashing and a demolition crew arrives to make way for new emotions. With frizzy hair and big plans to change things around, Anxiety ( Maya Hawke ) is the leader of this bunch that also includes precocious Envy (Ayo Edebiri), disinterested Ennui (Adele Exarchopoulos) – or, as she calls herself, “the boredom” – and painfully shy Embarrassment (Paul Walter Hauser).

The major friction within the first movie – Joy needing to find a way to deal with Sadness – seems like small potatoes compared to a battle over Riley's entire belief system. As the girl is forced to choose between hanging with her friends or making new ones like Val, Anxiety pulls a coup, ditching the conflicted youngster's Sense of Self and exiling Joy's old emotions to the back of Riley’s mind with a mountain of bad memories.

“Inside Out 2” frontloads the funny bits and then wallops you in the final act, which ambitiously depicts the desperate hopelessness when anxiety has a hold and won’t let go. (“I don’t know how to stop Anxiety," Joy says, one of the truest things you’ll ever hear in an animated fantasy.)

The middle is where it loses focus, as Joy’s group goes on a mission to set Riley right before it’s too late. The original movie took a similar tack but did it better, and the sequel misses a real chance to flesh out the intriguing new emotions more. Aside from Anxiety, a truly inspired Disney antagonist, they feel more like side characters than Anger, Fear, Disgust and Sadness did in the first outing.

The way these movies artfully create a connection between real life and a fantastical inner existence is still top-notch. Every parent of a tween or teenager will feel seen via a construction sign that reads “Puberty is messy” and get a kick out of Mount Crushmore, part of a revamped Imagination Land. And while there’s no Bing Bong around this time, the introduction of preschool cartoon canine Bloofy (Ron Funches) and the scene-stealing Nostalgia (June Squibb) showcase that signature “Inside Out” cleverness in its personalities.

Pixar has rightfully taken knocks for sequels and prequels that don’t hold up to the beloved originals. Recent films like “Turning Red,” “Luca” and “Soul” have the novel spark that's missing from, say, “Monsters University,” “Cars 3” and “Lightyear.” But “Inside Out 2” is one of the better revisits in the studio’s history because of how well it knows its audience.

Who hasn't felt anxiety getting the better of joy or a natural connection between sadness and embarrassment? With empathy, hope and a heap of metaphors, it's a matured "Inside Out" that still understands the wonders and wrinkles of being a kid.