It’s apt that 50 Shades Darker is a film about a sadist because every second of the movie I watched was pure agony.
50 Shades Darker picks up where the former film left off, with our heroine Anastasia Steele trapped in a parallel universe where all men are abhorrent scumbags who seek to emotionally manipulate her into bed.
Chief amongst these hideous men is Christian Gray, an emotionally abusive sexual sadist who stalks Anastasia relentlessly until she once again submits to his predatory wishes and the pair engage in Christian’s first ‘vanilla’ relationship.
I hated 50 Shades Darker for a lot of reasons; its plot is as dull as cleaning the garage, it’s about as erotic as a trip to the optometrist and its characters are as likeable as sea slugs.
It’s difficult to describe what dull shade of grey this film is though as it managed to pass the boring event horizon into a perpetual black hole of boringness where perceptions of time warp and the film transforms from a two hour marathon to a 7 hour horror show.
Plot lines start then go no where, all the poorly written drama of the film is dealt with ridiculously easy and even worse off screen.
However my biggest complaint is with the gender politics of the whole thing. Anastasia is a waif of a character who despite all the men in her life being toxic arseholes somehow never grows enough of a back bone to confront her abusers.
Oh sure there’s token effort made, she shouts at Christian for his possessive tendencies but it inevitably ends with her and Christian getting it on and forgetting about the whole argument.
The filmmakers were clearly aware of the problem as well as the only way they could make Christian seem like a reasonable human being and not a collection of rats wearing a man’s skin was to make his rival for Anastasia’s affections even worse than he is.
The year may be young but this is probably a hot contender for my worst film of the year.
More of a concept than a journalist, Tom Percival was forged in the bowels of Salford University from which he emerged grasping a Masters in journalism.
Since then his rise has been described by himself as ‘meteoric’ rising to the esteemed rank of Social Editor at UNILAD as well as working at the BBC, Manchester Evening News, and ITV.
He credits his success to three core techniques, name repetition, personality mirroring, and never breaking off a handshake.