Serena: Another film that trips over into the abyss of psychopathy
Its not the terrible movies that bother you. Its the movies that have the potential to be good that end up being terrible that really bother you.
Serena is one such film. It starts out quite brilliantly. A logging enterprise trying to survive in the beautiful landscapes of the Smokey mountains of South Carolina agains the populist movement to create a national park. Quite a hook. You are excited to see how this would turn out. And then walks in Jennifer Lawrence as Serena, a shrewed businesswoman who knows a thing or two about the logging industry! Wow, even better! Now you are really excited. But not for long, unfortunately. The film sharply falls off the deep end and descends into the common american fascination with psychotic behavior. It becomes a narrow, personal tale that dwarfs in comparison to the economic tale the movie started to tell. It is a terrible loss.
One wonders why so many good movies (Gone Girl, for example) start well and then take the easy way out. Guess that's why. Concluding a challenging story any other way would be too difficult. Craziness is easy. Maintaining sanity is very hard.