j* Movie Reviews 2019

The Cleanse (2016)

I've been wanting to see this for ages, and finally we sat down and got it done. Probably the trickiest thing here is seeing Johnny Galeki (Big Bang Theory) NOT playing Leonard. This is particularly weird as in this he's sort of suckered into a New Age health retreat... and my brain kept going "You're too sciencey for this!" In that way it was an interesting viewing challenge.

The basics are this, four willing participants head away to a special cabin style retreat where they drink gross cleansing drinks to rid themselves of all their problems. This is presided over by a mystical quack-doctor type figure, a true, true convert to the process and a guy who hasn't got his own cleanse under control.

I really, really dug the premise of this film.... That all your negativity can be vomitted up as a singular, globular weird living beastie. It's a kind of cool and whacky idea for a film... and it works. However I felt it stayed carefully superficial with this idea... skirting around a lot of the deeper and darker spaces it could have gone to.

The creatures are well made, and some of the big bad ideas are touched upon. But primarily this keeps itself within the vague relationship drama space.

Great idea, solidly executed, but not as weird or dark as I thought it could have been. Perhaps, very vaguely, a little like a poor imitation of Colossal... which did get deep and dark.

J* gives it 3 stars.