1 out of 5

Directed by: Alice Waddington

The usual reminder before I go into heavily criticize something: that I have not made any somethings. I have not made a film, good or bad, so the makers of Paradise Hills – all of the people involved – have accomplished more than me, and just getting to the finish line is an accomplishment.

Also: this is one of the worst movies I have seen.

I started with director Alice Waddington, moreso from the script than the direction, as the latter is stiff, but it was Waddington’s feature debut and ambitiously designed for a small budget; the former, though, is pretty atrociously dumb, and I was going to look to Waddington’s age for hints at how a script equivalent to a junior high schooler’s creative writing assignment on the perils of patriarchy could make its way to the screen… But Alice, while young, would’ve been almost 30 at the time of the movie’s release, and even if the script had been gestating for some years, I would’ve known better in my early 20s.

Wait, though, because I was mistaken: Alice only has a story credit; the script goes to Brian DeLeeuw and Nacho Vigalondo, and while I’m unclear on Brian’s age, he has novels dating back to the late 2010s, and Vigalondo is a seasoned filmmaker / writer by this point (and would’ve been in his 40s at the time). Now maybe I’ve indirectly addressed my criticism by highlighting that two dudes wrote a story about young girls rebelling over gender stereotypes, but I’m already being ageist: let’s assume these guys would’ve / could’ve at least known better than to delivery this phoned in outline.

So… maybe it’s producing an English-spoken film as a Spanish production? There is a certain “translated” nature to the performances and the lines themselves, and there could be something there if Waddington was both going through a translator and this being her first outing, but some seasoned actors in lead roles – Milla Jovovich, Emma Roberts – you’d think could have given their parts more shape despite those hindrances, if they existed. Which makes the vibe feel like a combination of unintentional and as-directed: that a certain sense of remove was desired to give the film a fairy tail-like quality, but however that was interpreted made the end result just feel detached in general.

Which brings us to the next wammy: when you’re making a fantastical world, it pays to have… some sense of reason behind its machinations. Paradise Hills’ is arguably a visuals-first film, which can be fine, even with a minimal budget, but that’s where the high school vibes come back into play, as the Fifth Element-adjacent outfits come across as fanciful play acting versus something integral to the world or feel of the film. None of it makes sense, contextually or otherwise, and doesn’t have a strong enough identity to not be anything except for Fifth Element-adjacent. It’s cute cosplay: good ideas, but the justification is solely, “I wanted to look like so-and-so” – insert some random magical girl anime example there – and it doesn’t go deeper than that.

The story is much the same way: an island where girls are turned into princesses for their demanding parents or husbands-to-be; “bad” behaviors trained out through a sleep and eating schedule and behavioral classes; Milla as headmistress; Emma as the new upstart who’s going to turn the whole thing on its head. In and of itself, that’s a repeatable enough setup for a sci-fi lite fantasy, but that one-liner is truly as far as we get. The extra wrinkles attempted add zero percent world-building, and rather just underline how empty the whole thing is, as we’re only shown one training method that, again, is a high schooler’s regurgitation of that Clockwork Orange movie their older sister showed them, and Waddington can’t settle on what vibe she’s going for, flipping between dream-like editing or soap opera exchanges or Brazil / Gattaca-y swipes at commentary, resulting in none of the characters being defined beyond pink hair, or a Southern accent, or spiky headphones, and there being negative stakes: is Milla actually in charge of anything? What happens if these girls don’t follow the rules?

I’m shrugging at you in response. The most emotion I felt was when getting myself pissed off while writing this review.