Get the latest gossip
‘The Electric State’ Review: The Russo Brothers Turn Postapocalyptic Picture Book Into a Bland Millie Bobby Brown Vehicle
A young woman, a bot and a smuggler trek through enemy territory hoping to reunite with her missing younger brother in Netflix’s Amblin wannabe.
Unfortunately, such is also the case for author-artist Simon Stålenhag’s “ The Electric State,” which turns his salient, bleak thriller about a young woman searching for her missing brother in a techno-dystopia into a whimsical, sanitized mess of mimeographed ideas from a handful of far better cinematic inspirations. This sleek virtual reality helmet invented by Sentre tech billionaire Ethan Skate (Stanley Tucci) was first used by the military and then popularized post-war for the civilian market so humans can rest and their mechanical drones can work. Production design discards the novel’s dark cyber-punk aesthetic (showing the omnipresent tech corp looming large over cityscapes with its octopus-like tentacles outstretched and the helmet-linked, desiccated dead littered everywhere) and embraces a brighter, family-friendly look with cartoonish robots and sleek corporate offices.
Or read this on Variety
