Review of Empire of Light (2022) by Ayoyo — 27 Dec 2022

Was this film some sort of sick joke?! Would be the question I’d ask given that I wasted my time with this insanely underwhelming watch and terrible script. The writing is muddy at times and disconnected. You can see the actors we're working hard here with little arc and incomplete character journeys (Colin Firth) and the entire supporting cast doing every piece of performance in them giving it 100% to make up for the muddy and disjointed character is one- note all the way until the end). Then, there are the very bad lines - which are forgivable only just.

But even worse than all of this, is it’s right-wing gaze that is embedded in exoticism and a very tired and out of touch approach to exploring love - of the opposite sex, race and age. The sex scenes from the jump are ill-timed, over-sensationalised and weaken the picture. Talk about relying on ‘sex’ to sell a film!! Sam is pushing this in every which way he can in this film using a pathetic cheap attempts at keeping the audience glued whilst literally fooling the viewer with cheap thrills that simply don’t work. Why Sam should sit down: he is out of touch and chasing his old days of American beauty - he makes film from an terribly inauthentic place and needs to get ‘real’ with reality. As does his producer, Pippa Harris.