Mute Review: 4 Ups & 6 Downs

By Jack Pooley / February 23, 2018

1. It's An Exercise In Style Over Substance

Calling a movie "style over substance" can be an incredibly trite complaint, but it absolutely holds true for Mute.

Some might argue that the style is indeed the substance here, but considering that much of the world-building on display feels like it's cribbing over-eagerly from Blade Runner, that's not really good enough.

It is a film propelled by its style, but that's not nearly sufficient to paper over a narrative that treads water for so long and ultimately doesn't add up to the gritty, consistently intriguing whole fans of Jones' first two films were clearly hoping for.

While Mute is an undeniable disappointment, it's certainly not the flaming trainwreck a lot of early critics are implying. Here's what Jones got right...