The Discovery

#StokerScore 7/10

They say that one of the most alluring aspects of vampire movies is the immortality of the creatures, how they walk the earth for eternity in a party-loving way (The Lost Boys), in a tortured way (Interview with the Vampire), or a mix of the two (Byzantium). The same can also be said for time travel or searches for the Fountain of Youth movies as well as any number of adverts for anti-wrinkle skin cream that appear before the movie. Death both fascinates us and terrifies us, partly I suppose because of its inevitability and the screenwriters and directors know it too.

There are lots of films about death. Not Death as a character in movies like The Seventh Seal, Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure or Meet Joe Black. I'm not even talking about the religious movies that show the linear or circular points of view that each religion follows. no, I mean death as a concept and what potentially follows. Movies like What Dreams May Come (1998), Flatliners (1990), or one of my favourites, 1946's A Matter of Life and Death starring David Niven. Some are well handled where others become lost in trying to explain the finality (or not) of our removal from this world.

Netflix, whose movies I have found to be a bit hit-and-miss, made The Discovery available yesterday and I have been looking forward to watching it. A great cast seem well placed in their respective roles, especially the age-less Robert Redford here playing a scientist who has found empirical proof of an afterlife. Rooney Mara is as enigmatic as ever, and even Jason Segel dials it down to play Redford's skeptical son. 

I generally found the movie to be quite slow in the first two thirds, only really coming alive, so to speak, in the final section. But with reflection I find myself thinking a lot about the movie, so that can't be a bad thing and it doesn't focus on religion, an area in which it could have become bogged down. Sure, it has its faults such as how some characters don't behave realistically and the science parts can seem a bit contentious, but as a thought-provoking movie that leaves you to make your own mind up about its philosophy, I enjoyed it.