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Civil War review – Alex Garland’s delirious dive into divided US society

Fratricidal warfare has exploded in North America, and war photographers including Lee (Kirsten Dunst) are eager to capture the money shot in this violent action thriller

W riter-director Alex Garland stages a spectacular if evasively apolitical “civil war” in this futurist-dystopian action thriller, involving hundreds of extras lying on the road next to upturned blackened cars with CGI-mutilated buildings in the smoky distance. The film’s fence-sitting reluctance to name any of the issues that might actually result in a civil war arguably means that the film can be enjoyed by the widest possible audience base. But the whole thing does finally snap into shape for a Call of Duty melee in the heart of American democracy, an ugly denouement possibly riffing on the January 6 Capitol attack, in which something seems to be clearly at stake and which (belatedly) gives us a glimpse of believable horror and delirium.

The scene is an America whose evident but unspecified divisions have exploded into open fratricidal warfare. The states of Texas and California are now ruled by the rebellious secessionists, the Western Forces, or WF, making massive advances on Washington DC, a situation about which the president ( Nick Offerman ) is in denial, making delusional TV addresses about how well he’s doing.

A group of photojournalists now plans to make the terrifyingly dangerous journey in a press SUV behind WF lines, possibly hoping to tag along with their advance on the capital, each secretly dreaming of the ultimate money shot: the capture or execution of the commander-in-chief. Veteran war photographer Lee is played by Kirsten Dunst with a permanently sorrowful and disapproving schoolteacherly expression of dismay; her buddy is Reuters reporter Joel (Wagner Moura) who is a warfare-adrenaline junkie, euphoric after each scary shoot up. (“Holy fuckin’ shit! What a fuckin’ rush!”) Ageing veteran Sammy (Stephen McKinley Henderson) is a New York Times reporter, the voice of wisdom. Just-out-of-college newbie Jessie, played by Cailee Spaeny, cheekily sweet-talks Joel into letting her ride along in their grownups’ car and almost overnight turns from a callow student into a cool wiseacre. They have conversations, in the time honoured manner of fictional war journalists, about subjects like whether journalism makes a difference and what they would be prepared to photograph – but weirdly don’t talk about what has caused this civil war.

It is clearly a reasonably diverse group, although it is this very diversity that gives us an easier task of guessing which of them is going to make a self-sacrificial gesture of courage to save the others. For their journey, Garland gives them freaky and surreal episodes and encounters, underscored by interesting and emphatic musical choices that mimic their dissociative trauma, although sometimes these episodes will be suddenly curtailed. At one stage they’re pinned down by a sniper in an abandoned outdoor play area with Christmas music bizarrely playing … the next thing we know they’re safely back in the car. How? It’s a strange, violent dream of disorder, drained of ideological meaning.

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'Civil War' review: Kirsten Dunst leads visceral look at consequences of a divided America

We see “Civil War” trending on social media all too commonly in our divided country, for one reason or another, and usually nodding to extreme cultural or ideological differences. With his riveting new action thriller of the same name, writer/director Alex Garland delivers a riveting cautionary tale that forces viewers to confront its terrifying real-life consequences.

“Civil War” (★★★½ out of four; rated R; in theaters Friday) imagines a near-future America that’s dystopian in vision but still realistic enough to be eerily unnerving. It's a grounded, well-acted ode to the power of journalism and a thought-provoking, visceral fireball of an anti-war movie.

Played exceptionally by Kirsten Dunst , Lee is an acclaimed war photographer covering a fractured America: The Western Forces led by California and Texas have seceded from the USA and are days away from a final siege on the federal government. Lee and her reporting partner Joel (Wagner Moura) have been tasked with traveling from New York City to Washington to interview the president (Nick Offerman) before the White House falls.

After visually capturing humanity's worst moments, Lee is as world-weary and jaded as one can be. But after saving aspiring photographer Jessie (Cailee Spaeny) during a Brooklyn suicide bombing, Lee becomes a reluctant mentor as the young woman worms her way into their crew. Also in the press van: senior journalist Sammy (Stephen McKinley Henderson), hitching a ride to the Western Forces military base in Charlottesville, Virginia.

Most of “Civil War” is an episodic odyssey where Lee and company view the mighty toll taken by this conflict: the graveyard of cars on what’s left of I-95, for example, or how an innocent-looking holiday stop turns deadly courtesy of an unseen shooter. Primarily, however, it’s a disturbing internal examination of what happens when we turn on each other, when weekend warriors take up arms against trained soldiers, or armed neighbors are given a way to do bad things to people they just don’t like.

'No dark dialogue!': Kirsten Dunst says 5-year-old son helped her run lines for 'Civil War'

Given its polarizing nature, “Civil War" is actually not that "political." Garland doesn’t explain what led to the secession or much of the historical backstory, and even Offerman’s president isn’t onscreen enough to dig into any real-life inspirations, outside of some faux bluster in the face of certain defeat. (He’s apparently in his third term and dismantled the FBI, so probably not a big Constitutionalist.)

Rather than two hours of pointing fingers, Garland is more interested in depicting the effect of a civil war rather than the cause. As one sniper points out in a moment when Lee and Joel are trying not to die, when someone’s shooting a gun at you, it doesn’t matter what side you’re on or who’s good and who's bad.

The director’s intellectual filmography has explored everything from ecological issues ( “Annihilation” ) to AI advancement ( “Ex Machina” ), and there are all sorts of heady themes at play in “Civil War.” “What kind of American are you?” asks a racist soldier played with a steady, ruthless cruelty by Jesse Plemons (Dunst's husband) in a disturbing scene that nods to an even deeper conflict in society than the one torching this fictionalized version. There's also an underlying sense of apathy that the characters face, with hints that much of the country is just willfully ignoring the conflict because they'd rather not think about it. But this hellish road trip also maintains a sense of hopefulness − via the growing relationship between Lee and Jessie – and is pretty exciting even with its multitude of horrors.

'You get paid a lot of money': Kirsten Dunst says she's open for another superhero movie

“Civil War” is a thoughtful movie with blockbuster ambitions, and while it does embrace more of a straightforward action flick vibe toward its climactic end, Garland still lands a lasting gut punch. He immerses audiences in the unpredictable nature of war, with gunfire and explosions leaving even the calmest sort on edge, and paints a sprawling canvas of an America forever changed. Thankfully, it’s just a warning and not a promise, using the movie theater as a public service announcement rather than an escape from the real world.

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• DVD & Streaming
• Action/Adventure , Drama , War

Content Caution

In Theaters

• November 8, 2019
• Ed Skrein as Dick Best; Mandy Moore as Ann Best; Patrick Wilson as Edwin Layton; Rachael Perrell Fosket as Dagne Layton; Woody Harrelson as Chester W. Nimitz; Luke Evans as Wade McClusky; Luke Kleintank as Clarence Dickinson; Dennis Quaid as William “Bull” Halsey; Aaron Eckhart as Jimmy Doolittle; Keean Johnson as James Murray; Nick Jonas as Bruno Gaido; Etsushi Toyokawa as Isoroku Yamamoto; Tadanobu Asano as Tamon Yamaguchi; Darren Criss as Eugene Lindsey; Jun Kunimura as Chuichi Nagumo

Home Release Date

• February 18, 2020
• Roland Emmerich

Distributor

Movie review.

“Don’t push us into a corner,” Japanese Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto told Commander Edwin T. Layton, assistant naval attaché to the U.S. Embassy in Tokyo, back in 1937. “You must give those of us who are more reasonable a chance to carry the day.”

Alas, Yamamoto’s reasoned, moderate plea for restraint goes unheeded by leaders in his own country. Dialogue and diplomacy vanish like ash in the wind amid increasing regional aggression. And Japan’s fearsome military machine begins its brutal march across Asia and the Pacific.

Four years later, that aggression erupts unexpectedly at Pearl Harbor. As American sailors set up chairs for a chapel service on the deck of the U.S.S Arizona one sleepy December morning, Japanese Zeroes roar overheard, strafing, bombing and torpedoing the pride of the U.S. Pacific fleet. The surprise attack—one that Layton, now chief intelligence officer at Pearl had tragically warned could be coming—lays waste to the fleet anchored there. The preemptive strike exacts a terrible toll: nearly 2,500 Americans dead. Five battleships sunk. Thirteen more destroyed or damaged.

It seems a crippling blow.

But Yamamoto, now in command of the Japanese Combined Fleet, frets and fumes. Despite the apparent success of the ambush, Admiral Chuichi Nagumo failed in one key respect: finding and destroying American aircraft carriers at sea as he’d been ordered to do. America’s might is diminished, yes. But not its capacity to take the fight to the Japanese with its aircraft carriers. “I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve,” he says.

Yamamoto’s words will prove prophetic.

Layton, now reporting to newly installed Pacific commander Chester Nimitz, believes the Japanese are marshalling their forces for a knockout blow, one that will leave the Pacific undefended and the West coast of the United States vulnerable to invasion.

But where ?

A crack team of American codebreakers has intercepted enough evidence to convince Layton that the blow will fall at Midway. Layton even thinks he can identity the date and time of that attack. Washington thinks otherwise. But Nimitz trusts his intelligence man and his unorthodox team of codebreakers.

And so Nimitz and Layton, along with Admiral Bill Halsey and other top Navy brass, quietly, methodically and desperately set a trap for the Japanese Navy at that otherwise insignificant sandy dot in the middle of the Pacific.

But can they spring it? Can they achieve the victory that will turn the tide?

Success will depend on surprise. Skill. Luck.

Oh, and aircraft carriers.

But most all, success at Midway will depend upon the bravery of a small group of seasoned-but-battered pilots whose determination to repay the infamy of Pearl Harbor does indeed fill them with Yamamotos’s much-feared “terrible resolve.”

Positive Elements

The Battle of Midway started on June 4, 1942 and lasted three days. It was indeed the decisive turning point in the contest for the Pacific. The Americans’ eventual victory hangs by the thinnest of threads, and it is ultimately delivered by a combination of resolve, ingenuity, intuition and most—most of all—raw courage.

Much of the story revolves around the efforts of two men: Edwin Layton’s attempts to decipher Yamamoto’s intent (and convince leaders of that intel); and the daring, death-defying courage of a fighter-bomber pilot named Dick Best (and the men who fly with him).

Layton has cultivated a team of codebreakers whose work he trusts completely. But the task of codebreaking, as we see here, is as much art as science, as they can only decipher about 25% of the coded Japanese communication traffic that they intercept. Layton and his team piece together their best guess at Yamamoto’s intent. But it is a guess, and Washington’s intel officers (working with the same information) interpret the sketchy information differently.

Layton fights fiercely for his interpretation of the data. He’s haunted by the idea that he was to blame for Pearl Harbor, because he didn’t follow his hunch (based, again, on intelligence data) that the attack was coming. He’s determined not to repeat that mistake, and Nimitz backs his man fully, despite Washington’s pressure to do otherwise.

Dick Best’s task, meanwhile, is both simpler and oh so much harder: dropping bombs on Japanese ships. Best helps convince the Navy that new torpedoes (dropped from fighters) aren’t working effectively. That forces a return to much riskier bombing tactics, in which fighter-bombers fly nearly straight down on their aircraft carrier targets—against a storm of defending anti-aircraft fire—to release their explosive payload at the last possible moment. It’s a job that claims the lives of many pilots and their rear-seat gunners. But Best and his crew are up to the task.

Best works to convince one fear-filled pilot to keep flying. [ Spoiler Warning ] When that pilot dies in a botched carrier take-off, Best grapples with guilt about having encouraged the man to climb back into the cockpit.

Another subplot involves pilot Jimmy Doolittle’s famous bombing raid on Tokyo. The men flying it know they can’t carry enough fuel to get back to the carriers, and they debate even whether they’ll be able to make it to unoccupied Chinese territory before they run out of fuel.

The frontline pilots’ bravery here is augmented by the at times unorthodox thinking of the leaders plotting the Americans’ strategy. They’re willing to take bold risks to succeed, whereas the Japanese leaders are shown to be rigid and inflexible in terms of listening to junior officers’ innovative ideas—ideas that would have circumvented the American trap at Midway. And though generals aren’t necessarily known for their humilty, both Nimitz and Halsey have that quality and are willing to listen and not simply default to conventional wisdom.

When the aircraft carrier Yorktown is badly damaged at the Battle of the Coral Sea, Nimitz is told that it will take at least two weeks to make it seaworthy again in drydock at Pearl. Nimitz replies that they have 72 hours to make it happen … and they do.

Throughout the film, Americans exercise bravery and courage in the face of withering enemy fire. One captured American bravely refuses to divulge any information to his Japanese captors. We also get small glimpses into the lives of Navy wives stationed at Pearl Harbor as they stoically shoulder the burden of the risks their husbands are taking. Both Dick Best’s wife, Ann, and Edwin Layton’s wife, Dagne, do everything they can to encourage and support their husbands.

Spiritual Elements

A sailor who says he doesn’t believe in God complains about having to set up chairs on the deck of the U.S.S. Arizona for a chapel service.

We hear two earnest exclamations of “Thank God!” and another of “God bless them.” One pilot is said to be the godfather of another’s daughter. The Japanese Emperor is referred to as a “heavenly sovereign.”

Reflecting on the uncertainty of life and death, one sailor tells another, “You never know what’s going to get you, so why worry about it.”

Sexual Content

We see Ann Best and Dagne Layton in nightgowns. Dick and Ann cuddle in bed together, but things never proceed further than that onscreen. Married couples are shown kissing a couple of times.

We hear a sarcastic reference to a pilot who has a reputation for “chasing tail.”

Violent Content

Midway is a war movie. As such, we see many intense images involving naval combat and the casualties it claims.

Vulnerable sailors are shot by Japanese fighters at Pearl Harbor. Explosions and fire rend ships and kill many men. (We see several completely charred corpses in a Naval infirmary.) Multiple men experience terrible burns. Some pilots are shot and killed in their planes. Scores more are shot out of the sky, their planes incinerated by artillery or strafed by bullets. Wounded planes that don’t explode outright often plunge into the ocean more or less intact. (One crew manages to escape in a life raft.) After the attack on Pearl Harbor, an orderly says that they have been carrying in body parts in pillowcases.

Multiple ships get bombed, torpedoed and filled with bullet holes, exploding spectacularly. One Japanese admiral chooses to go down with his mortally wounded carrier, and a junior officer insists on going with him.

Japanese pilots also shoot and bomb villages in occupied mainland China. In retribution for Jimmy Doolittle’s raid, we’re told that the Japanese killed some 250,000 Chinese in the region where Doolittle and his men bailed out. We see piles of rotting Chinese corpses in a village hut.

The Japanese also execute a captured American pilot brutally by pushing him into the ocean, then dropping an anchor in after him that’s tied to his leg, dragging him to a watery grave.

One pilot’s oxygen container is contaminated with a chemical that destroys his lungs and causes him to cough up blood.

Crude or Profane Language

One f-word, five s-words. God’s name is paired with “d–n” half a dozen times. Jesus’ name is misused twice. We hear about 15 uses of “h—” and 10 or so of “d–n.” Sailors angrily spit the vulgarity “b–tard” five or six times. We hear one to three uses each of “a–,” “a–hole” and “son of a b–ch.” An American calls a Japanese a “little bugger.”

Drug and Alcohol Content

Sailors smoke continually throughout the film. Several scenes involve sailors and wives drinking alcoholic beverages at Pearl Harbor’s officers club, on beaches and in other social settings. One sailor drinks from a flask.

At a memorial service for a fallen comrade, U.S. sailors fondly recall beer-drinking exploits in Canada during Prohibition. (Sailors raise shots in his memory.)

An admiral is shown taking prescription medication.

Other Negative Elements

For reasons that are never clearly spelled out, one U.S. fighter pilot tells the wife of another how reckless her husband is in battle. It’s unclear whether he’s interested in the man’s wife, but for some reason he wants to undermine their relationship.

American film director John Ford arrives at Midway to shoot fake battle scenes immediately before the real battle commences. He’s urged to take cover, but he instructs his cameramen to capture the battle from a very exposed promontory.

“This is our job. And we’re the guys who have to hold the fort until the cavalry arrives.”

That’s the pep talk Dick Best gives a petrified pilot before the final battle commences at Midway. And it’s also a terrific summary of the no-nonsense bravery exhibited by the sailors and pilots whose stories are woven together heroically here. These men had a job to do. And they did it, bravely, willingly. It was a job that cost 307 of them their lives.

But their sacrifice, movingly depicted by director Roland Emmerich ( Independence Day ), turned the tide in the Pacific. It was the beginning of the end for the Japanese Navy. It represented the awakened giant of Yamamoto’s nightmares.

Midway is a deeply inspiring movie. It’s also a war movie, though, with all of the content that comes with it. Many men die. And we’re reminded of where the phrase “swears like a sailor” came from, because there’s plenty of language here, too.

Some viewers may not want to endure the verbal assault that goes along with the visual one here. But those who do choose to sit through this dramatization of the greatest naval battle in U.S. history will be profoundly reminded of the cost to secure the liberties that Americans—and many other people around the world—cherish.

Adam R. Holz

After serving as an associate editor at NavPress’ Discipleship Journal and consulting editor for Current Thoughts and Trends, Adam now oversees the editing and publishing of Plugged In’s reviews as the site’s director. He and his wife, Jennifer, have three children. In their free time, the Holzes enjoy playing games, a variety of musical instruments, swimming and … watching movies.

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Underdog soccer team tale sticks to feel-good formula.

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this movie.

Team camaraderie, friendship, and support of one a

Miss Montgomery breathes some life into the town o

Some pushing and shoving among classmates. Kate ha

The Knight's coach wagers Miss Montgomery a ki

"Damned," "hell," spoken by pa

Embedded product placement: "I wish we had a

Kate's dad is a very heavy drinker, who is see

Parents need to know that this feel-good sports movie has a sideline reference to alcoholism (Kate's father, a heavy drinker, is seen passed out at a bar), and some rebellious behavior by bored kids, but everyone overcomes their obstacles by the end of the movie.

Positive Messages

Team camaraderie, friendship, and support of one another's skills are all themes running through this feel-good movie.

Positive Role Models

Miss Montgomery breathes some life into the town of Elma because she believes in the potential of the kids in her class. Deputy Dog cares about the people in his community and he even agrees to sponsor a family who have illegal immigration status.

Violence & Scariness

Some pushing and shoving among classmates. Kate has a pocket knife at school that she uses to carve graffiti on her desk.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

The Knight's coach wagers Miss Montgomery a kiss if he wins the game. She responds that he must kiss the mascot goat if her team wins.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

"Damned," "hell," spoken by parents. "Kick butt" by kids.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Products & Purchases

Embedded product placement: "I wish we had a Pizza Hut in our town." and "We stopped at Pizza Hut." A bag of Cheetos makes a memorable appearance in the first scene.

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

Kate's dad is a very heavy drinker, who is seen passed out drunk at a bar. Parents drink beer and smoke cigarettes in the local bar.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that this feel-good sports movie has a sideline reference to alcoholism (Kate's father, a heavy drinker, is seen passed out at a bar), and some rebellious behavior by bored kids, but everyone overcomes their obstacles by the end of the movie. To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

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What's the Story?

Elma, Texas is a pretty boring place to live -- just ask the kids who wander through the overgrown fields and snooze through class. The football legends of the past are now unemployed parents; in other words, the town is washed up. But Miss Montgomery ( Olivia d'Abo ), the new exchange teacher from England, sees it differently. She Introduces the kids to the game of football "that the world knows," where the ball is round and skill trumps brawn. The kids reluctantly begin to learn the game and before they even have a team name, they are off to the big city to play a game. In an against-all-odds scenario, both boys and girls practice and play together and, yes, start to win games, largely thanks to the new kid in town, Juan, and his mad soccer skills. The only problem is that Juan's mother won't let him play because she is afraid that their family secret will be discovered. Sheriff Palmer ( Steve Guttenberg ) helps solve their problem in the nick of time.

Is It Any Good?

Given the fact that so many people like to see the underdog come out in front, this sports movie satisfies, even if it is pretty predictable. What lends texture to the formula is the underlying struggle that the families of these kids are going through. One character comes from a broken home where her father drinks beer all day long. One kid is proud to claim that his dad has a job, whereas most parents are scraping by because the local "plant" has closed. Finally, there is a new kid in the class whose mother is afraid to put down roots, lest she get deported. Performances by the plucky Olivia d'Abo and the goofy Steve Guttenberg move the plot along.

Kids who are just getting into soccer will enjoy watching the team pull it together, though older kids might be a little bored by what is now old hat in the sports movie realm. Pretty clean fun for the family, nonetheless.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about life in a small town before the advent of the Internet. How did kids pass the time in this movie? How would the movie be different if the kids in this movie had handheld devices, for example?

Kids talk longingly about going to Pizza Hut in this movie. Did you notice the advertising messages ?

Why does Juan's mother keep him from playing soccer? What does it mean to be an illegal immigrant in this country? How does Juan's mother cope with her immigrant status? What does Deputy Dog do to help her?

Movie Details

• In theaters : May 4, 1995
• On DVD or streaming : May 4, 2004
• Cast : Jay O. Sanders , Olivia d'Abo , Steve Guttenberg
• Director : Holly Goldberg Sloan
• Studio : Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment
• Genre : Family and Kids
• Topics : Sports and Martial Arts
• Run time : 100 minutes
• MPAA rating : PG
• MPAA explanation : .
• Last updated : February 18, 2023

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Adam holz, paul asay and johnathan mckee, tv review: the baxters.

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About Plugged In Entertainment Reviews

Plugged In is a Focus on the Family publication designed to shine a light on the world of popular entertainment while giving families the essential tools they need to understand, navigate and impact the culture in which they live. Through our reviews, articles and discussions, we hope to spark intellectual thought, spiritual growth and a desire to follow the command of Colossians 2:8: "See to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the basic principles of this world rather than on Christ."

About Adam Holz, Paul Asay and Johnathan McKee

Adam Holz  After serving as an associate editor at NavPress' Discipleship Journal and consulting editor for Current Thoughts and Trends, Adam now oversees the editing and publishing of Plugged In's reviews along with hosting The Plugged In Show and the Plugged In Entertainment Review radio feature.   Paul Asay has been part of the  Plugged In  staff since 2007, watching and reviewing roughly 15 quintillion movies and television shows. He’s written for a number of other publications, too, including  Time,   The Washington Post  and  Christianity Today . The author of several books, Paul loves to find spirituality in unexpected places, including popular entertainment, and he loves all things superhero. His vices include James Bond films, Mountain Dew and terrible B-grade movies. He’s married, has two children and a neurotic dog, runs marathons on occasion and hopes to someday own his own tuxedo. Feel free to follow him on Twitter  @AsayPaul . Jonathan McKee  is the author of over twenty books. He has over 20 years youth ministry experience and  speaks  to parents and leaders worldwide, He can be heard each week on the Plugged In Entertainment Review radio feature and The Plugged In Show. You can follow Jonathan on  his blog , getting a regular dose of youth culture and parenting help. Jonathan, his wife Lori, and their three kids live in California.

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'Sting' Review: A Creepy Spider Horror Movie That Gets Caught in Its Own Web

Hey, at least it's still a better spider movie than Madame Web.

The Big Picture

• Sting fails to fully embrace the potential of a murderous spider, getting bogged down in a poorly written family drama.
• The film sporadically succeeds in capturing the absurdity of a killer spider, but is weighed down by excessive padding.
• The design of the spider creature is a standout, but the film's climax comes too late and emotional aspects fall short of being engaging.

In the opening moments of writer-director Kiah Roache-Turner ’s Sting , a creature feature that never makes the most of its premise, we get a glimpse of what could have been a joyous horror movie. Various exterminators are called to an apartment complex in New York City , where they are picked off one after another by a giant spider. Frank ( Jermaine Fowler ) is the first death that we really see, with the actor screaming and shouting with all the necessary gusto to make it fun as he gets dragged away. But the film doesn’t sit with this for much longer, as we then almost immediately flash back to trace the path of how it is that we got here. In addition to being an immediately disappointing shift in focus, Sting spends nearly its entire runtime trying to get back to the promise with which it began .

Sting (2024)

After raising an unnervingly talented spider in secret, 12-year-old Charlotte must face the facts about her pet-and fight for her family's survival-when the once-charming creature rapidly transforms into a giant, flesh-eating monster.

Instead of fully embracing the ridiculous potential of a murderous spider that takes over an apartment, the film becomes tangled up in a poorly written and acted family drama that gets in the way of the fun bits. Even as it picks up in the end, the journey to get there drags it down. While it could tickle the fancy of those looking for a horror movie built around the common fear , Arachnophobia this is not. Where that managed to make the arachnid into what was essentially a slasher villain, capturing things from their perspective in abundantly absurd fashion while still bringing plenty of serious attention to the craft itself, Sting is only sporadically successful at doing this . There are a few high highs scattered throughout the film, but there are just as many low lows where you’re left wondering why we’re spending so much time building up to the best parts that we already saw in the beginning.

What Is 'Sting' About?

This begins with a wonderfully ridiculous opening scene where we see something from space coming hurtling toward Earth. It then proceeds to crash through the window of the apartment complex that is surrounded by snow where we will spend the majority of the film. That’s right, this spider is from an unknown place in the vast galaxy and is soon about to upend the lives of the already troubled family that now unknowingly has it as a roommate. Charlotte ( Alyla Browne ) is the young kid who becomes the film's protagonist and initially keeps this spider in a jar. She feeds it other bugs and is fascinated by how her new pet dispatches them before gulping them down. However, this only gives it more strength and leads to it seeking out bigger prey in the nearby apartments. Her mother Heather ( Penelope Mitchell ) and her stepfather Ethan ( Ryan Corr ) are initially oblivious to this, because of course, as they mostly bicker over adult things while also caring for a newborn. There are other quirky characters here and there, though they mostly exist to get picked off while the family drama plays out right next door. In this excess noise, Sting never finds enough strength to leave much of a mark .

There are bursts of bloody brutality , including a kill that takes someone apart from the inside out, which is a real highlight, that provide enough of a jolt to almost make you think there is something more substantively silly to chew on here. Almost, but not quite. Instead, just when it starts seeming like it is going to let loose, it settles back into the family dynamics that feel like padding more than they do anything else. There is one moment where Ethan says something so cruel near the end that it is almost comical, as the moment isn’t earned. You’re just wondering where the hell that came from and why he decided to lash out at a child who, while rebellious in cliché movie fashion, we are meant to believe he also cares about.

The subsequent banding together aspect of the movie as they must do battle with the spider in the film’s climax doesn’t work either. Sting is pushing hard for something more emotional to hang itself on , but this is just never as interesting as it seems to think it is. Instead, you’re just wishing all of that would step aside, and we’d get a horror film more from the perspective of the killer rather than the stock characters it’s setting out to consume. There are moments where it manages to shed all the excess nonsense and get right down to these strengths, though they’re too siloed off in the film to hold much weight in the overall experience.

The Spider in 'Sting' Is Still Something Special

All of this proves to be a shame as the design of the spider creature itself is often quite fun . There was clearly a lot of thought put into how it would move around and what it could do. Such moments represent the film at its most creative. Just seeing it dangle over its next victims or crawl towards them is proper fun. It’s the type of thing that, had it been made the heart of the experience, would have ensured it was all really cooking.

The entire last part of the movie is especially joyous, with Charlotte taking the fight to the spider à la John McClane in Die Hard , though it still comes as too little too late. Hanging over all of it is the sense that it should have launched into this much earlier and with more gusto . Instead, it teases us with where it is all going and then, like far too many movies do, flashes back to drag along until we finally make it back there. Rather than creating suspense, it just makes the whole thing into far more of a slog than a genuine horror romp. In the end, the whole film just can’t get itself completely unstuck from this web of its own making.

Sting is a horror movie about a killer spider from outer space that somehow falls short of the fun potential of such a premise.

• The spider itself is a gem, even if it can't fully make up for the lackluster film around it.
• The conclusion that goes full Die Hard is a joyous way to end despite taking a long while to get there.
• After a promising start, the experience struggles to recover from the flashback that sends us back to a less interesting movie.
• The central family drama doesn't feel earned and instead just comes across as a distraction from a more fun horror movie.
• The performances and writing leave much to be desired, especially when what we really care about is the spider.

Sting comes to theaters in the U.S. starting April 12. Click below for showtimes near you.

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Americans Have Enjoyed Imagining Civil War for a Long, Long Time

The “what if we had a big ol’ fight” genre is back, this time on the big screen..

The year is 1849. Martin Van Buren has just been sworn in for his fourth term as president. Every state from the Carolinas on south secedes from the Union. The U.S. Army occupies Richmond to keep Virginia from joining them. Separatists take to the western mountains and organize a guerrilla campaign. In Washington, Van Buren assumes dictatorial powers, hangs traitors on a whim. The sons of the Old Dominion have to choose between the Union they have been raised to admire and the state they deeply adore.

An intriguing alternate history? Not quite. The novel in which this story appears flashed forward in time, not back. Well, actually, it did both: Published in 1836 but with a date on the title page of 1856, as if remembering a war that had already occurred, The Partisan Leader: A Tale of the Future didn’t so much relate a different version of the Civil War as prophesy its coming, missing the eventual start date by only a dozen years.

That makes it the little-known granddaddy of a whole subgenre of American literature (and now film): blood-drenched imaginings of what it would be like to witness the crackup of the country. Americans have always been at once horrified and titillated by the prospect of these states becoming disunited. If the U.S. is an “imagined community,” as the anthropologist Benedict Anderson described the modern nation-state, one of the things its citizens most love to imagine is its violent undoing.

Lately, even more so than usual, a profound sense of decline and disintegration has come to define the national mood. How obvious, then, even inevitable, to pair this primordial form of American catastrophism with the evidently deathless genre of big-budget disaster movies. Americans fighting Americans, the country falling apart, the breakdown of civic order—what could be more popcorn-worthy than that?

As a genre, disunion fantasy fiction has often showcased bad politics and even worse art. The hypothetical scenarios of such works tend to be hilariously implausible, the authors’ intentions murky at best—or, sometimes, clearly mercenary. Even in this context, however, Alex Garland’s much-ballyhooed Civil War stands out for its eagerness to exploit popular fears of mass political violence without offering any meaningful reflection on the underlying factors that have led to it. Experience it in IMAX! the promotional poster urges, in a tone that sits uncomfortably with the director’s claim that he made the film as a warning of what could occur if we are not careful. If the past is any guide, such macabre depictions of what Edmund Wilson called “ patriotic gore ” may only accustom us to the likelihood that it will.

Obsessing about a potential future civil war was a favorite activity of Americans in the years before they ventured into the fields to murder one another en masse. As the crisis over slavery deepened, a bumper crop of new novels depicted a Southern breakaway movement and a bloody conflict with the North. The books’ authors tended not to deplore the possibility but to welcome it. They wanted readers to envision, from the safety of their armchairs, what the destruction of the nation would look like—and to help bring it on.

The Partisan Leader , though published under a pseudonym, was widely known to be the work of a Virginian named Nathaniel Beverley Tucker, a son of the slavocracy who taught at the College of William and Mary and landed sooner than most Southerners on the conclusion that secession offered the only guarantee for the continuation of Southern institutions—slavery above all. As early as 1820, Tucker swore never to rest until he saw the Union “shattered into pieces.” A professor of law at William and Mary for nearly 20 years, Tucker trained a generation of Southern leaders in how to think about the Constitution. Later, his students would lead their states out of the Union, just as Tucker had hoped.

But Tucker’s ambitions as an educator went beyond formal instruction. Turning to fiction and using the novels of Walter Scott as a model, he wanted to help Southerners imagine how the breakup of the Union might happen, and to show where their loyalties should lie if it did.

Duff Green, a prominent Washington publisher and close ally of South Carolina Sen. John C. Calhoun, printed 2,000 copies of the book in two volumes. The Southern Literary Messenger, an influential periodical then edited by Edgar Allan Poe (who corresponded with Tucker and sought advice from him), praised the artistry and plausibility of the novel, as well as its argument for Southern resistance to federal tyranny: “The reader rises from the perusal of the book with solemn impressions of the probable truth of all the writer’s speculations; and he naturally asks himself, by what means the evils he has seen depicted may be prevented.” Northern journals ignored the scandalous work, and booksellers refused to stock it, but The Partisan Leader found new relevance a quarter century later, with the secession of the seven southernmost states. In 1861 a New York publisher reprinted the book with the title A Key to the Disunion Conspiracy . The novel seemed to have predicted the future. Events were following Tucker’s script.

Seizing on Tucker’s prescient vision, other writers saw a market for similar works, only now they added elaborately detailed portrayals of interstate violence—the CGI of the time. In 1859 John Beauchamp Jones, a successful Maryland novelist (also once praised by Poe), published Wild Southern Scenes: A Tale of Disunion! And Border War! Thirteen Southern states abandon Congress, then send an army to occupy New York City and abduct free Black people and bring them back as slaves. A villainous Northern general proclaims himself “Lord Protector of the United States,” invades the South, and wields the guillotine to gruesome effect. Great Britain leaps into the fray, keen to take advantage of the chaos and reclaim its lost colonies. North and South join together to expel the foreign foe. The Constitution is restored.

A New York–based businessmen’s magazine found the book full of “ingenuity and invention” and hoped it would “have the effect of opening the eyes of the more conservative to the terrible results that will follow from the sectional madness and folly now disturbing the country.” By contrast, Edmund Ruffin, an eccentric, long-maned agricultural reformer from Virginia and a passionate advocate of Southern separatism, thought Jones’ book “very foolish”—especially its feel-good ending—and decided he could do better. The result, Anticipations of the Future (1860), was both impressively timely and remarkably unhinged.

The novel, serialized in a pro-secession South Carolina newspaper, then packaged as a book by a top Southern publisher, took the form of fictional dispatches by a correspondent to an English newspaper about a crisis following the Lower South’s secession from the Union. To suppress the rebellion, the president of the United States, New York’s William Seward, sends an army into Virginia, prompting the rest of the slave states to leave. A gruesome fight ensues, climaxing with the wholesale slaughter of mixed-race Northern armies, described by Ruffin in gory detail. The abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison is hanged, his corpse defiled by vultures. Meanwhile, the Western states secede and join the rebellion. Northern cities go up in smoke, leaving “many thousands of charred and partly consumed skeletons.”

Writing these scenes, Ruffin confided to his diary, was “alike amusing to my mind, & … conducive to immediate pleasure.”

Only about 400 readers bothered to pick up Ruffin’s overwrought novel, much to the author’s chagrin. That might have been because the future he anticipated was already becoming a reality. In the novel, South Carolina seizes Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor—just where the actual fighting would begin only months after the publication of Ruffin’s book, when the 67-year-old author, a volunteer with the militia, was himself given the high honor of firing one of the first shots in the war he had fantasized about with such pleasure.

The unfathomable devastation that ensued, leaving three-quarters of a million dead, hundreds of thousands more wounded in body and mind, and much of the South a smoldering ruin, took the fun out of imagining what a nation-rending conflict would look like. The genre disappeared for a time. Ruffin shot himself in the head after the surrender at Appomattox. The reality of Southern secession hadn’t matched up to the turgid fantasies of his fiction.

In the decades after the Civil War, expectations of national division over slavery were replaced by fears that mass immigration would undermine American unity. In 1880 Canadian-born San Francisco lawyer and journalist Pierton W. Dooner published Last Days of the Republic , which depicted a Chinese army overthrowing the Pacific states, then marching east all the way to Washington: “The very name of the United States of America was thus blotted from the record of nations and peoples.”

Perhaps one of the strangest disunion-fantasy novels ever published was Imperium in Imperio (1899), by Sutton E. Griggs, a 27-year-old preacher and son of formerly enslaved parents. The novel revolves around a secret government⁠ of, by, and for Black Americans⁠, based in a bunker beneath a Texas college. Devoted to racial progress and fighting discrimination, the Imperium recruits a rising generation of ambitious, educated Black men who have grown frustrated at being denied the most basic rights and privileges of citizenship. “They grew to hate a flag that would float in an undisturbed manner over such a condition of affairs,” Griggs writes. “They began to abuse and execrate a national government that would not protect them against color prejudice, but on the contrary actually practiced it itself.”

After a black postmaster is lynched in South Carolina⁠—an event that really happened , a year before Griggs published his novel⁠—the Imperium decides to take Austin and declare war on the United States. “Thus,” the president of the Imperium proclaims, “will the Negro have an empire of his own.”

The turmoil of the 1960s and ’70s, breeding a new wave of concern about national failure and societal collapse, led to another boomlet in fictional depictions of the United States’ cracking up. The Texas-Israeli War: 1999 , written by sci-fi authors Jake Saunders and the late Howard Waldrop at the peak of the 1973 oil crisis, depicted the reestablishment of the independent Lone Star Republic in a world torn apart by biological and chemical warfare. After Texans kidnap the American president, mercenaries from the Jewish State attempt to rescue him. On Wings of Song (1979), by Thomas Disch, portrayed an America destroyed by economic inequality and culture war, divided between a liberal “Babylon” on the coasts and a semiautonomous conservative region, “Columbia,” in the heartland, populated by “undergoders”—an astute depiction of the rural-urban divide that would only worsen in the coming years. In Margaret Atwood’s now-canonical The Handmaid’s Tale (1985), a turn to religious fundamentalism brings a second civil war and the rise of a theocratic, women-enslaving dictatorship.

A few novels rejected dystopian warnings in favor of, like the antebellum Southern writers, actually proposing disunion as an improvement on the status quo—a stance shared by authors of vastly different political stripes. Ecotopia , a 1975 novel by the environmentalist Ernest Callenbach, imagined the establishment of a separatist West Coast republic whose residents live in dynamic, sustainable harmony with one another and with nature, while far on the other side of the political divide, William Luther Pierce’s The Turner Diaries (1978) records the events of the “Great Revolution of 1991–1999,” in which Black people, Jews, and other non-Aryans are slaughtered and white “race traitors” hanged from lampposts. Seizing nuclear bombs from a military base, a shadowy group called the Order starts an atomic civil war with the federal government.

It can hardly be a good thing that the antebellum era’s obsession with concocting increasingly bloody disunion scenarios has reappeared with fresh vigor in recent years. There have been too many next-civil-war books to count, and most, true to the form, have been absolute garbage—maudlin, contrived, clichéd.

But not all. In Ben H. Winters’ Underground Airlines (2016), set in a 21 st -century United States where slavery remains legal in four states and the titular rescue network helps “Persons Bound to Labor” escape to Canada, the alt-history is only a provocative premise for airing matters relevant in both its fictional world and our real one: What compromises hold a country together, and when are those not worth the cost? Omar El Akkad’s American War (2017) shows a country split apart at the end of this century over an attempt to ban fossil fuels. El Akkad at once lays out a clever, thought-provoking scenario—more stable Middle Eastern powers intervene as the U.S. often has in the civil wars of other nations—and delves into complexities of identity, loyalty, and the human cost of civil conflict. Christopher Brown’s harrowing Tropic of Kansas (2017) paints a harrowing picture of a nation in the grip of authoritarianism and ecological collapse and celebrates the relentless pursuit of justice in the face of overwhelming odds.

And now we have director Alex Garland’s new film, with a title as bland as the movie itself. Like so much in our culture right now, Civil War isn’t nearly weighty enough to bear the load of discourse that’s been based on it. Focused on the ethical dilemmas and psychological torments involved in war photography—which, OK?—the movie takes advantage of our dark fascination with the possibility of political polarization leading to constitutional crisis and political violence, while refusing to actually explore those themes.

For all the ear-splitting explosions and hair-raising exchanges of gunfire across a variety of modern American landscapes—and, yes, the IMAX experience is intense—the film seems to be conscious of its own essentially pornographic nature. There is something cheap and unseemly in the way the camera lingers on a pile of human bodies, or the Lincoln Memorial blown to smithereens. Just as Southern secessionist Edmund Ruffin found writing gory scenes of executions and massacres “conducive to immediate pleasure,” Joel, one of the war photographers in Civil War (played by Wagner Moura), looks out on a night sky filled with arcing mortar shells and grunts, “This gunfire is getting me so fucking hard!”

The viewer is meant to be implicated, and we are. But instead of any profounder meditations on why mass slaughter both attracts and sickens us—for even Joel is eventually reduced to a puddle of tears—the film offers 90 more minutes of picturesque wreckage, bone-chilling executions, and, finally, the eagerly panted-after “money shot” (a phrase one of the journalists actually uses as the film’s climactic scene unfolds). At least Ruffin had an excuse for pleasing himself by turning his fantasies of American carnage into art: He wanted to bring it about. Garland claims he wants his film to do the opposite, but it’s strange, then, that not a single line or moment even implicitly alludes to what if anything could have been done to keep things from reaching such a breaking point.

In interviews, the filmmaker has claimed , “It’s a film about the product of polarization and division.” But if we are to understand that the president (played by Nick Offerman), who appears only fleetingly in the movie, has turned “fascistic,” as Garland explains —claiming a third term, abolishing the FBI, bombing American citizens—why is it bad that insurgents have risen up to overthrow him? If it’s not bad, how can the movie be described, as lead actress Kirsten Dunst has put it , as “anti-war”?

This deeply unserious film is not interested in probing those tensions, or, more to the point, its creator is too scared of alienating half the public by addressing them. It’s neither pedantic nor partisan to object to such explosive material being used to such shallow ends. Far from deterring the violence it depicts, Civil War may well convince some content-addled moviegoers that it sure would be something to see.

Margot Robbie to Produce the Monopoly Movie

A monopoly movie has been rumored since as far back at 2007, and this may be its best chance yet..

Lionsgate revealed a big update on its upcoming Monopoly movie during its CinemaCon 2024 presentation today, announcing that Barbie's Margot Robbie on board to produce.

Robbie will be producing the film as part of her production company, LuckyChap, which also produced Barbie and is led by her, Tom Ackerley, and Josey McNamara. Hasbro Entertainment will also be producing the movie.

“Monopoly is a top property – pun fully intended,” said LuckyChap in a statement. “Like all of the best IP, this game has resonated worldwide for generations, and we are so excited to bring this game to life alongside the wonderful teams involved at Lionsgate and Hasbro.”

While no details were revealed for the Monopoly movie, Lionsgate did remind us that the game has "99% global awareness" and has sold almost half a billion copies as of 1935.

The Monopoly movie saga has been a long one as there were reports back in 2007 that Ridley Scott would be leading the charge on a film based on the beloved game. More recently, it was reported in 2019 that actor Kevin Hart and director Tim Story would be teaming up for the movie.

What we do know for sure, however, is that Lionsgate is able to make this movie thanks to its acquisition of eOne from Hasbro for $500 million.

Have a tip for us? Want to discuss a possible story? Please send an email to [email protected] .

Adam Bankhurst is a writer for IGN. You can follow him on X/Twitter @AdamBankhurst and on TikTok.

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‘Sasquatch Sunset’ Review: Big Feet and Small Brains

Four unrecognizably hairy actors, including Jesse Eisenberg and Riley Keough, play mythical creatures in this endearingly bonkers movie.

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By Jeannette Catsoulis

If ever a movie seemed destined — nay, designed — for cult status or ignominy, “Sasquatch Sunset” is it. An initial glance suggests the kind of entertainment that emerges from late-night, bongwater-scented dorm rooms; yet surrender to its shaggy rhythms and you’ll find this sometimes tiresome portrait of a family of mythical beasts is not without intelligence and a strangely mesmeric intent.

Set in a North American forest (and filmed in the California Redwoods), the movie wraps four dauntless actors in layers of matted, gray-brown hair and impressively molded prostheses. Thus disguised, they lumber through a year of mating, childbirth, death and discovery, unburdened by names or lines of dialogue. To communicate, they grunt and yowl and gesture with a serio-comic zeal that earned my reluctant admiration. It must have been murderously sweaty inside those suits.

Little by little, personalities seep out. The alpha male (Nathan Zellner, who co-directed with his brother, David Zellner) is grumpy, aggressive and disruptively randy, courting furious rejection from the group’s sole female (Riley Keough). Her preferred partner (Jesse Eisenberg) is a gentler, more thoughtful soul, as is what appears to be their son (Christophe Zajac-Denek). Predators and poisonous fungi threaten the unwary, but these hirsute hillocks are mostly a danger to themselves — as the alpha will learn when he seems bent on visiting his lust on a hungry mountain lion.

A sincere gift to Bigfoot believers or a surreal cinematic prank, “Sasquatch Sunset” mimes the familiar beats of the nature documentary. This may be a one-joke movie, but it’s an oddly endearing jest, the beasts’ resemblance to primates tweaking our empathy. Even as their infantile, often disgusting antics become tedious, the film’s tone shifts from daft to tenderly melancholic as signs of human encroachment on their habitat multiply. The contents of an unattended campsite — especially a cassette player and a mirror — prove transfixing and unnerving; a paved road provokes the evacuation of every available body fluid. It’s a revolting sight, but also a touching one. We can see they’re terrified.

The roots of “Sasquatch Sunset” reach all the way back to 2011, when the Zellners’ four-minute film, “Sasquatch Birth Journal 2,” played at the Sundance Film Festival, highlighting the brothers’ inclination to cast a serious eye on patently unserious material. Since then, they have continued to treat preposterous stories — “Kumiko, the Treasure Hunter” (2015) , “Damsel” (2018) — with disarming gravitas. This time, they’re ably assisted by the marvelous cinematographer Mike Gioulakis, who, in films like “It Follows” (2015) and “Old” (2021) , has shown particular skill in giving a sublimely unsettling patina to ridiculous ideas. Here, his peaceful wildlife shots capture the natural world with a quiet awe, giving the forest a majesty unearned by the woolly dimwits it shelters and whose survival seems unlikely.

Positioning the sasquatches as threatened rather than threatening, “Sasquatch Sunset,” as its title suggests, is an oddball meditation on one species’ decline. Maybe even our own.

Sasquatch Sunset Rated R for spilled intestines and a perpendicular penis. Running time: 1 hour 29 minutes. In theaters.

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Even before his new film “Civil War” was released, the writer-director Alex Garland faced controversy over his vision of a divided America with Texas and California as allies .

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“Fallout,” TV’s latest big-ticket video game adaptation, takes a satirical, self-aware approach to the End Times .

“Sasquatch Sunset” follows the creatures as they go about their lives. We had so many questions. The film’s cast and crew had answers .

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Clifford the Big Red Dog

• Comedy , Drama , Kids , Sci-Fi/Fantasy

Content Caution

In Theaters

• November 10, 2021
• Darby Camp as Emily; Jack Whitehall as Casey; Izaac Wang as Owen; John Cleese as Bridwell; Sienna Guillory as Maggie; Tony Hale as Tieran; David Alan Grier as Packard; Horatio Sanz as Raul; Paul Rodriguez as Alonso; Russell Peters as Malik; Keith Ewell as Mr. Jarvis; Bear Allen-Blaine as Mrs. Jarvis; Tovah Feldshuh as Mrs. Crullerman; Jessica Keenan Wynn as Colette; Ty Jones as Police Chief Watkins; Russell Wong as Mr. Yu; Siobhan Fallon Hogan as Petra; Mia Ronn as Florence

Home Release Date

• December 14, 2021
• Walt Becker

Distributor

• Paramount Pictures, Paramount+

Movie Review

When you’re at a new school with no friends and your mom is constantly gone away on business trips, life can get a little lonely. Especially when life at school is kinda tough, too.

Emily Elizabeth doesn’t want to be popular or the center of attention. In fact, she’d rather nobody noticed her at all. Because at least then the school bully wouldn’t single her out for humiliation.

Her mom tells her that she’s special. She tells Emily that the unique ones are the ones who rule the world someday.

But it’s not someday . It’s today . And Emily doesn’t want to be brave like her mom. She just wants a way to get through the school year without crying herself to sleep each night.

Luckily for her, Emily’ introduced to a fellow outcast in the form of a small, fire-hydrant-red puppy. Emily names him Clifford, and the two are instant friends.

But their jubilation at finding each other is short-lived. That’s because the morning after receiving Clifford, Emily wakes to find he’s grown 10 feet overnight! Her little red puppy is now … a big red dog.

Now, Lyfegro (a genetics company specializing in growing giant food) wants the giant canine to help with their research. Emily, of course, isn’t going to turn Clifford over to a life of being poked and prodded by scientists.

But if she really wants to protect Clifford, she might not be able to keep him.

Positive Elements

Emily’s uncle, Casey, is left in charge of her while her mom goes away on business. In previous visits, he’s accidentally left Emily in various places (and even gambled her away once). Emily, in turn, is rude to her uncle. She also takes advantage of his irresponsible behavior, manipulating him into doing what she wants even when she knows it’s wrong.

None of that is positive, of course. But after a rocky start, Casey becomes determined to do better. He admits that he feels like a failure and has let his older sister (Emily’s mom) down. He notes that his sister sacrificed everything for him, giving up a scholarship to a prestigious school in order to help raise him. He proves himself by helping his niece save Clifford from Lyfegro and encouraging her to do the right thing even when it’s hard.

Emily learns a valuable lesson about sacrifice through Casey. Because even though she loves Clifford, she realizes she can’t protect him adequately. [ Spoiler Warning ] She conquers her fear of being alone again in order to save him. And she sends him to live on an exotic animal preserve in China.

In the process, she realizes that she’s not alone after all. Her neighbors and a boy from her school have all come to love Clifford, not just because he’s a cool dog but because they all love Emily, too.

And when Emily’s later put on the spot to speak in Clifford’s defense, she bravely stands up for the dog, reminding people (including adults) that just because someone or something is different, doesn’t make it dangerous or freakish.

Emily’s mom is proud of her daughter’s boldness. And she’s also grateful to Casey for helping Emily on this path.

Spiritual Elements

A character named Mr. Bridwell opens the film by stating that “magic is all around us if you know where to look.” And there’s certainly something magical about the old man.

People say he’s like a wizard, showing up right when you need him. His menagerie (which is somehow bigger on the inside than it is on the outside) hosts a variety of strange creatures like Clifford. We hear about how a parakeet repeated positive affirmations to its mute owner until the man could speak. And a spider monkey massaged the feet of its lame master until she was up and running around again.

Emily is told that how big Clifford gets depends on how much she loves him. And considering he grows ten feet overnight, it’s safe to say she loves him a lot .

We hear about praying and miracles. Someone says, “Can I get an amen?” Someone says “Ishmael” is a name from the Bible. Someone guesses that an “Indian burial ground” might be responsible for Clifford’s growth.

Sexual Content

It is implied that Casey lived with his ex-girlfriend. Before a job interview, a man who hasn’t showered pulls the waistband of his pants away from his body to examine himself. We see a man in a t-shirt and underwear.

Violent Content

Clifford’s size causes a lot of problems. He accidentally destroys most of the furniture in Emily’s apartment just by walking around it. More than once, adults get tossed across rooms by Clifford’s wagging tail. And a man in a human-sized, inflated hamster ball is kicked around the park when Clifford mistakenly thinks it’s a toy.

Casey and Emily’s neighbors get into fights with guards from Lyfegro. Some people are injured when the animals being experimented upon are released from Lyfegro’s labs.

A man falls off a roof while fixing a satellite, but Clifford catches him, saving his life.

Emily jokes about a magician who wants to cut an irritating woman in half. A man with a prosthetic hand says he lost the appendage to a deli meat slicer. A small dog is temporarily swallowed by Clifford, but he spits the tiny pooch out unharmed.

Crude or Profane Language

We hear the British expletives “bloody” and “bollocks.” There is a single misuse of God’s name. We also hear incomplete uses of “What the—?” and “Kiss my—!” Someone exclaims “holy cow” and “holy sheep!” We hear the term “jeez.”

Drug and Alcohol Content

Someone references steroids.

Other Negative Elements

Lyfegro’s mission statement is to feed the world by growing enormous food. However, it’s also a corrupt organization. Various employees plot to falsely claim ownership of Clifford by injecting him with a microchip stating he belongs to them. And when company representatives tell the press and police this lie, people believe them.

Emily gets bullied by her rich classmates, who nickname her “food stamp” since she attends the private school on a scholarship. When her school has a recycling fundraiser, they mock her for actually recycling instead of having her mom write a check (as their parents have done). And when her bag of recyclable cans rips, they film it, posting the video online with some cruel comments.

Emily’s landlord has strict rules prohibiting pets. Because of this, she and Casey lie and go to extreme lengths to prevent the man from discovering Clifford. When the landlord eventually does find out, he evicts them and locks them out of their apartment before they can retrieve their things.

Clifford is accidentally left behind when the pound comes to collect his mother and siblings from the warehouse where they live. Afterwards, he wanders into the city and is nearly run over by a car before Mr. Bridwell rescues him.

There’s quite a bit of toilet humor revolving around Clifford’s natural bodily functions. He urinates on a tree and Casey remarks about how bad “Number 2” will be. Clifford flatulates, gassing out the vehicle he’s hiding in. His slobber covers several people. He licks himself, and a fellow dog is lifted to sniff Clifford’s butt (normal dog behaviors, of course, but also an intentional movie-making choice here).

At the animal hospital, the vet argues with Casey over who will administer the rectal thermometer.

A landlord refuses to fix things without bribes. A girl says she lost her sense of humor on the subway. People lie and steal. Kids are mean to each other. Two people high-five when they learn someone isn’t dead before realizing that someone else is . A man says he hates children. A scared boy says he can’t get his backside to unclench.

Much like the children’s books it’s based on, Clifford: The Big Red Dog contains a lot of good messages.

Emily learns that just because she’s different doesn’t mean she’s a freak. Likewise, her new dog, Clifford, while large and red, acts just like every other dog.

Moreover, they aren’t alone. Neighbors and classmates, whom Emily previously thought disliked her, turn up to help her and Clifford escape Lyfegro. All Emily really had to do was be brave, be bold and be herself .

Throughout her adventure with Clifford, Emily also learns that her Uncle Casey isn’t as hopeless as she’d previously thought. While he’s certainly made mistakes in his life, Casey tries hard to be there for his niece when she needs him most. And simply by being there for Emily, Casey also proves that he can be a dependable caretaker to his sister.

And finally, Emily learns what it means to make sacrifices for the ones you love.

Along the way, there’s some toilet humor in play and a few impolite phrases that younger children might be prone to repeating. But otherwise, the Clifford movie is as delightful as Norman Bridwell’s original books.

Emily Tsiao

Emily studied film and writing when she was in college. And when she isn’t being way too competitive while playing board games, she enjoys food, sleep, and geeking out with her husband indulging in their “nerdoms,” which is the collective fan cultures of everything they love, such as Star Wars, Star Trek, Stargate and Lord of the Rings.

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