TRIGGER WARNING: The movie & book, be aware of triggers such as Suicide, depression, death/grief.
Please DO NOT read my review if you haven’t watched the movie or read the book unless you don’t plan on doing either and have no issues with spoilers. This whole review is VERY DETAILED and includes HEAVY HEAVY SPOILERS.
Title: All The Bright Places
Release Date: 28th February 2020
Cast: Elle Fanning, Justice Smith, Virginia Gardner, Alexandra Shipp, Luke Wilson, Keegan-Michael Key and Kelli O’Hara
Director: Brett Haley
Writers: Jennifer Niven (Book and Movie), Liz Hannah
Genre: Drama, Teen, Young Adult, Romance, Mental Health
Certification: 15
Run Time: 107 Mins
My Rating: 5/10
Summary: The story of Violet Markey and Theodore Finch, who meet and change each other’s lives forever. As they struggle with the emotional and physical scars of their past, they come together, discovering that even the smallest places and moments can mean something.
Review: Okay before I start my review I want to say that I didn’t see this movie in the way everyone else seems to have and I have a very opposite point of view of it all. So please don’t go sending me hate messages or being mean to me or anything because I didn’t see it the way you did. I’m glad that you got to enjoyed it and loved it but for me I didn’t see it as beautiful or romantic at all.
So let me start by saying the very few things I did like about this movie the acting was incredible no doubt about it the cast could act, I was amazed at the talent in this movie. The directing, the sets, the landscapes, the music all of these elements were absolutely incredible but for me that’s all that was good about this movie. That’s all I found well made and enjoyable.
Finch was a very volatile character and from the first few second we saw him I didn’t like him. Before we are aware of his mental health issues I could sense he was bad news. He latched onto Violet like a switch had gone off in him, he became obsessed with her, with fixing her. As the story progressed his obsession with her got worse and stronger, he convinced her to do things she didn’t want to do, didn’t feel mentally she was capable of doing yet. He taunted her, lead her on and tortured her.
I keep seeing other viewers, fans each one of them saying how much he loved her and how perfect his character is and that he loved Violet but I didn’t see any of that in this movie. Fair enough he showed her things of beauty, that in all bad there are still good things.
The mental health issues he had were not fully diagnosed clearly and were not handled very well in this movie, I kept wanting someone to actually step in and help him, he needed some serious help and therapy but everyone pretty much ignored it and let him shrug it off like there wasn’t anything actually serious going on with him. His decline became so apparent through the whole movie and way before the end of the movie it was obvious what he was going to do. It should have been so apparent to people surrounding him but nope not at all. Not one person registered that he was getting worse that he was declining more and more in his mental health.
Enough of him I’d be here forever so let’s talk about Violet she lost her sister and again got no help for her mental health, just forced back into to school, back into a world she wasn’t ready for, she was fragile and vulnerable and fell into the trap by Finch. You could tell from the start she wasn’t going to kill herself she was just looking for a way out, not wanting the pain anymore. She even said later in the movie she’s scared of dying so she wouldn’t have killed her self she just didn’t want to live with her suffering. She needed people that cared about her and could support her to help her heal. It was great when she actually opened up a bit to her dad but it still didn’t achieve much, but it was a small positive step.
One thing I found very odd with Violet is that after Finch died she was suddenly perfectly okay, how would that have been possible? When her sister died she couldn’t function but when the boy she was “in love with” died she was okay and trying to spread positivity to everyone, that really didn’t make much sense to me.
Another part that annoyed me with Violet was how quickly she ditched her best friend , who was also struggling desperately with her own mental health. I understand she was grieving and depressed, but that’s no reason to completely ditch someone that had been there for her and needed a friend more than ever herself. My heart honestly broke for Amanda, when she showed up at that meeting and then the fact that violet saw her at the funeral and still didn’t talk to her, still made no effort to be her friend, just leaving her to struggle, to have no one. That was so cruel and I just wish the writers could have made the group of Finch’s friends and of Violet’s old friends one big group, Amanda needed her friend back. I personally would have loved a bigger story arc for her, there was so much they could have done with Amanda and her story.
The next thing I want to talk about is the whole issue of how detrimental a lot of this storyline is to the targeted democratic of this movie, it’s constantly dealing with mental health disorders but doesn’t show a healthy reality of it. The trailers heavily romanticise mental health disorders as did this whole movie. For a watcher or even someone reading the book this could be so triggering, suicide is featured from literally the first scene, ocd is featured but really handled so badly, we have human obsession, grief, depression, black outs, anger and child abuse. We get one scene in a therapy class for other teens going through issues and we are introduced to bulimia and social anxiety disorders but they mention them and leave it there. This movies premise wasn’t a healthy one in my opinion and it can be so dangerous to so many people and doesn’t help or inform young watchers of healthy ways to deal with mental health issues they may be going through themselves.
I never read the book, I owned it at one point but never really knowing what it was about other than two young teens that help heal each other and fall in love. But I never really felt like reading it. I’m actually glad now having watched this movie that I didn’t read it as I wouldn’t have liked it, it would have been triggering for me at the time I owned it. If you’re still reading my review after everything I’ve said previously then you might be thinking why would you even watch this movie, and the answer is that I watched the trailer it looked like a sweet romance movie plus I saw Virginia Gardner in the trailer and HAD TO WATCH. I thought it would be a light and beautiful movie but I was mistaken and that’s not what it was.
The movie was just not what I was expecting and wasn’t cutesy and romantic I didn’t feel any love between the two characters at all, it all felt unnatural and dangerous that they were together. I wish I was able to view this movie the way others had and over look the issues and the volatile-ness of it all but I couldn’t and so this is where I left off feeling once the credits rolled on.
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