Listen

The amount of superhero films in the modern day grates on me. One thing I do to make myself feel better about the state of modern cinema is to remind myself that none of this is new. Cinema has always gone through major genre trends that take up too much space in the medium. For example, the 1990’s was inundated with erotic thrillers. And the thing about that genre is that they’re all bad. Even the good ones are pretty bad. And Listen isn’t even one of the good ones.

Listen focuses on a bisexual woman named Sarah. Sarah has recently moved to be closer to her boyfriend. But she and her boyfriend apparently have some intimacy issues. So, Sarah begins to listen into people’s phone calls in her building. While listening in on a phone sex line, Sarah hears a voice talk about murdering sex workers on a nightly basis. She tries to convince the police of this, but they dismiss her. After all, the police have recently put away a serial killer targeting sex workers and they don’t want the bad press. So, Sarah plays private detective. She enlists the help of her best friend, Krista. In classic queer woman style, Krista is not just Sarah’s best friend but also her ex. And Krista’s not exactly over Sarah.

This is an uninspiring film to write about. Listen is bad. Of course it’s bad. But within the genre of erotic thrillers it’s not like it stands out as particularly bad. It doesn’t really stand out in any way. The best erotic thrillers are the ones loaded with style. Like Basic Instinct or Dressed to Kill. These movies are still silly and villainize the LGBTQ* community which is also not great. But at least they’re nice to look at! Listen doesn’t even have that. It has no distinct style or visuals. It hardly has competence in cutting a film together. But again, it scrapes by just enough so there isn’t even the delight in the film being an abject failure. The film’s lack of ambition rings clear through every shot of this unremarkable film.

The paragraph below this image will have spoilers for the ending of the film. Heads up!

Unsurprisingly, Listen villainizes the queer woman. As soon as Krista showed up, I was certain that she’d be the bad guy. And to Listen’s credit, it gave me the run around until the last scene. But we get there. Krista set up all of these murders to get back with Sarah. We learn this in voiceover from Krista. Voiceover wasn’t something the film utilized until this last scene which is how you know this comes from a top-tier script. I usually love a queer villain, but erotic thrillers are the exception. Because they’re so common. It often feels like erotic thrillers add a queer element to be edgy and shocking. But you know what would actually be edgy and subversive for the genre? Not making them the villain. But Listen doesn’t want to be subversive. So, we get yet another bisexual, unhinged murderess. Groundbreaking.

Listen is pretty bad. But it’s a very forgettable kind of bad. The reason it’s so forgettable is down to a lack of ambition or simple desire to be good from its filmmakers. And that’s pretty bad. I can at least respect when a movie swings big and misses spectacularly. Listen isn’t that. It’s more of a film that does the bare minimum to hold together and make a quick buck. That’s a deeply annoying attitude to have as a filmmaker. And it lead to a deeply unremarkable film.

Overall rating: 3.8/10

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