A film that possesses the ability to make time feel as though it is standing still, and fails to raise a single laugh.
Slack Bay strikes me as a love-it-or-hate-it project, with no room in the middle ground for people to sit on the fence, and you'll know which side you fall within the opening 10 minutes. If, within these first 10-15 minutes, you just can't get into it and you haven't even nearly laughed, do yourself a favour and go home, it will not improve for you.
Set in France in 1910, two detectives are investigating a series of shocking disappearances of tourists in a seaside village against a backdrop of cannibalism, gender fluidity and incest - it screams 'laugh a minute' right? It tries very hard to be whimsical but ends up channelling it in the worst of ways and the physical comedy feels cheap.
Eliciting more groans and eye-rolls than laughs, the film's only saving graces are its cinematography and costume design; both are excellent.
If overacted French slapstick comedies are your thing then you could be in for something great here, but for me, despite how hard I tried to embrace it, it had me itching to leave the screen.
