OK, "System Crasher" is raking in rave reviews, but I found it one of the most frustrating movies to watch ever. It is the story of a traumatised child who acts out and is generally impossible to handle and thus gets moved from foster care to foster care and clinic to clinic until one of the orderlies whose job it is to deal with aggressive teens and re-introduce them to society takes on the case. The setup of him as a well-loved, soft spoken and in control helper is gorgeous. The acting of the girl playing the disturbed Betty is outstanding. The camera work depicting her mental state and fragmented memory flashbacks is surprising and interesting. But the movies drags on and repeats the same topic ad nauseam. There are some surprises and some generally scary scenes, but all in all it all plays up to a non-existing climax. It just ends. It is an important topic and there is a lot to make this work and be important but I felt cheated in the end. Where depicting McMurphy in "One flew over the cuckoo's nest" as the hero, the uplifting music and frantic cuts every time Betty yet again foils another well-intentioned attempt to protect her from herself feels just annoying. She is no hero, there is no system she breaks and if it means that normal society can't deal with her, what's the alternative?
Review of System Crasher
System Crasher
(2019)
Georgeous, well done but eventually frustrating - maybe that's the point.
2 March 2020
Warning: Spoilers