“Mercy” is a Netflix movie that was released last month. The movie at first masquerades as a drama with high family tensions and a dying family member. However, it quickly turns into a thriller and suspense novel, with a rather strange plot line.
With a dying mother of a combined family of both biological and step-children involved, it holds an air of mystery as the suspense builds. The tension between the family members causes assumptions and blame to be placed as a home invasion begins and two of the brothers cannot be found.
The invasion is by several masked figures who seem to have unclear motives. Honestly, the mystery of the strangers’ motives was done poorly because even when the motives are revealed at the end, the masked figures’ methods used to get to their end goal are still unexplained.
Normal movie constructs were flipped in this film, which would have normally been interesting. However, there was no solid base for this flip, so it ended up being more of a flop.
Additionally, about halfway through, the movie goes back to the beginning to tell the story more in-depth and from a slightly different vantage point. While this was meant to explain a lot, it was a waste of time.
This variety in perspectives could have easily been shown in another way, without re-enacting the suspenseful scenes toward the beginning. This took away from the movie in two ways: First, because the repetition of a suspenseful scene takes a significant amount of the drama and suspense away. Second, the extra footage from the different perspectives was still difficult to follow and left the viewer with little more clarity on the situation than before.
The movie also hardly included any characters with ethical, strong or consistent values. Because of this, it didn’t seem as if there was a lot at stake. It did not feel like much of a loss for the viewer to see injuries or losses of the family or the masked figures because the drama was more like melodrama.
Every character seemed like a villain in some way or another, except the woman brought by one of the biological sons, seemingly at random. She had some moral integrity and seemed like a reasonable human being, but her placement seemed incredibly unfit in comparison with the rest of the characters.
Overall, the movie lacked focus, character development and connection with its viewer. The conventions and ideas behind the movie could have worked in an interesting manner, but they were not executed well.
I give this movie 1 out of 5 stars.
