On March 5, Chaos Walking hit theatres but was not expected to do as poorly as it did during the pandemic. With Tom Holland being a new big-name actor, it makes sense that he would branch out to other projects instead of staying in one franchise. However, the film he picked has more things wrong with it than right.

Chaos Walking is about Todd, a teenage boy who lives in Prentisstown on a different planet than ours. Todd was told that when they came to the new world, a native alien species named the Spackle, released a germ that killed all the women and made the men have noise; noise is where all the male thoughts can be heard by everyone. When the only survivor, a girl of a new ship crashlands on the planet, Todd realizes that he must save her from his town’s mayor. 

The computer-generated noise was entertaining at times to watch and chuckle at. It makes for some light-hearted humor throughout the film. On top of that, there are some moments in the film where characters use noise to produce images to either help or scare others. I wish it was used more in the form of producing images not just for laughs.

Chris Stuckmann, a Youtube film reviewer stated, “The film doesn’t really feel like it has much of a structure.”

On the other hand, everything else in the film was boring or just didn’t lead to anything. They talked about the Spackle throughout the film, but we only see the native aliens once. After the one scene, we didn’t get to see them anymore and it caused me to feel unfulfilled.

Adding to that, the characters were not interesting at all. I did not care about any of the characters even during the scenes where a couple of characters died. I constantly found myself checking the time to see how much more I had to sit through. Even during the main scenes with Todd that tried to make you empathize with him didn’t turn out the way the producers intended. The villain in the film was also boring. He has a big secret in the film that makes viewers wonder what it is for the big reveal but you can guess it halfway through the film.

Stuckmann also stated, “It is just a strange, strange story, and never once did I feel invested in it.”

All in all, Chaos Walking was an interesting concept, but it lacks all of the characteristics that could have made it a great film. The noise had potential but wasn’t used properly, the native aliens were boring and not shown as much as they should have been, you don’t connect with any of the characters, and the big reveal can be guessed halfway through the film. I wouldn’t recommend this film to anyone.