I Kill Giants | MOVIE REVIEW

Apparently Chris Columbus produced this one, meaning this is the first time in years that something he’s been a part of, didn’t turn out to be an absolute dumpster fire. Credit where credit’s due.

I Kill Giants was directed by Anders Walter and stars Madison Wolfe, Zoe Saldana, Imogen Poots, and Sydney Wade. What it is, basically, is a fantasy story about a kid - without much of a real place in the world - who, with the help of some monsters, is forced to come to terms with a really difficult part in her life. Now, if you’re thinking that this sounds very familiar, that’s because it probably does, and it did to me. This movie felt very reminiscent of A Monster Calls - except, in this case, it’s more like A Monster Comes.

Okay, so I’d been anticipating this one ever since I saw the trailer for it around some time last year. It featured an interesting premise, some cool visuals, a unique main character, and felt very fresh. As intriguing as the trailer was, I did my best to go into this one blind, but with some definite expectations for it.

To keep things short, some of those weren’t met…

But, before I get into the stuff I didn’t like about it, I wanna talk about the things I liked in I Kill Giants. First off that list is the acting, because all of it was pretty solid. There were a couple of names in here that I expected to deliver - those being Zoe Saldana and Imogen Poots - but the best performance in the whole movie came from Madison Wolfe, who plays the main character, Barbara. I knew nothing about this kid going into the movie, and she really did put on her big girl pants in this one. She killed it.

Like a giant. Ha!

When it comes to these kinds of movies, a lot of weight really is put on the child actor’s shoulders. If your lead child actor sucks, then they take the whole movie down with it. Thankfully in I Kill Giants, the kids in it were actually pretty good actors. Sydney Wade, who plays Barbara’s friend (or her only friend, as is the norm in these kinds of movies), was also great, I thought, and played off of Madison Wolfe pretty well. Both of them had some great moments of heart and emotion between them, and they really did feel like friends towards the end.

This movie is also surprisingly very well-shot and pretty well-directed. There are loads of beautiful wide shots and nicely done close-ups in here, and, even if the movie felt as if it was doused in gray sauce, there was a certain beauty to it. I could feel the passion behind the camera through how this movie was shot, and that made it all the more engrossing to watch.

A lot of it’s really boring, though.

One of the biggest issues this movie has, is definitely how it was paced. A lot of scenes go on for really long, and a lot of the time, those scenes don’t feel as if they’re getting at anything, or taking me anywhere important. The movie felt as if it was being stretched really, really thinly - if that makes sense. Some things that happen in this movie feel like they’re in it for the sake of having those things in the movie, and, because the main character in the movie says that it’s pointless to her, I started feeling as if a lot of what I was watching was pointless, too.

Because this movie had a lot in it, I was expecting it to be build-up to something, you know, important, but that wasn’t the case. I mean, sure, the actual build-up happens eventually, but it happens so quickly that I couldn’t get myself invested in it. As such, by the time the big showdown happened, it felt anticlimactic and left me feeling just a bit shortchanged.

In movies like this, there’s usually a big emotional hook to it, but it didn’t get me. I definitely understood it, but it didn’t hit me the way the filmmakers probably wanted it to. As to why that is, exactly, is a bit of a spoiler, so I’ll squeeze that in after my grade for the movie. If you want the short version - sans spoilers - here it is; the movie establishes the crux way too late into the story. Had it been established earlier, and had the story been more tightly built up around that, then it probably might’ve worked for me. In the end, though, all I could really say was, “Oh…”

Something else about the movie that bummed me out was that I wasn’t really rooting for the main character. As good as the performance behind her was, I didn’t think the movie did enough in the build-up to sell to me that this girl was someone I should care about. She was difficult to deal with, and, in the end, I found myself projecting to Zoe Saldana’s character more than I was to Barbara. I’m sure she’s a nice girl, but she was honestly such a pain in the ass to watch sometimes.

Overall, this movie kinda disappointed me. I was hoping I’d like it a lot more than I did, but, in the end, I wasn’t really feeling it. While the acting in it was great, and the cinematography and visuals were fantastic, the pacing in it sucked and left the whole movie feeling anticlimactic by the time it wrapped up. I wanted to like this movie more, but in my book, I can’t say I’d rate it higher than a McKayla.

As I promised earlier, I’m gonna talk about why the emotional hook in this movie didn’t quite grab me. As I also mentioned earlier, that would entail some spoilers - particularly about the ending - so consider yourself warned.

The big crux to this movie is that the girl’s mom is dying, and that the giants are all in Barbara’s head. They’re all figurative - they’re not real. Granted, that isn’t a bad hook for a movie to have, but my problem with how they executed it in this one is that they reveal what exactly their purpose is, in the last half-hour of the movie. They sorta drop it on your head, and expect you to process it right away. On its own, that would’ve been fine, but with how they did it here, it makes the movie feel as if it’s taking a sharp right and changing its course entirely.

It’s at this point in the movie that I started thinking to myself, “you know, I’ve seen this done a lot better in A Monster Calls.” In A Monster Calls, the monster turns out to be figurative, as well, but the movie was about the relationship between the boy and the monster and was established early on. I feel like if I Kill Giants was built more tightly around Barbara and her fight against the giants, and if they had established earlier on the fact that Barbara’s mom was dying and that the giants were there to take her, then the hook would’ve worked better.

So, I Kill Giants - have you seen it? What did you think about it? Leave a comment below, let me know - as well as if you think I’m being way too harsh about the movie’s twist. As always, this has been Rafa. Stay classy.