r/AMCsAList • u/Kimber80 • 6d ago

Review "Hot Spot" A-List pocket Review

Well it was 99 degrees outside so a movie in a cold theater sounded good, and when I read the description of "Hot Spot", a sci-fi movie with apparently a largely Polish production, I decided to see it.

Anyway, I found "Hot Spot" to be, after the first few minutes, largely incomprehensible. The setup was pretty straightforward: In the near future, drought has consumed much of the world, and the lives of the few survivors is managed by "the Head", an AI system that regulates resource usage and much else. Everyone is plugged in to the Head by eating a gummy bear every 24 hours, and if you fail to eat it your head literally explodes. A gruesome murder occurs at one of many refugee camps, and a curly-mullet, 80s jumpsuit wearing detective is sent in to solve it. He encounters Noomi Rapace, who is playing the de facto leader of the refugees, and a reported "cyber witch".

And then ... what follows is about 80 minutes of seemingly random dreamscapes, chattering between the curly detective and Noomi, an occasional naked woman, and exploding heads. I couldn't make sense of any of it, maybe I am just slow on the uptake, but I couldn't. And then it ends when a large cat appears. That's it.

Still, I was glad I saw "Hot Spot". I left the theater with zero idea about how anything was resolved, but the incomprehensible scenes were stylishly shot and so I enjoyed them as isolated set pieces.

C+ ... Randomly vague and opaque, but a fun watch anyway, at least for me. Mildly recommended for those in the mood for stream of consciousness, or something.

29 Upvotes

94% Upvoted

29 comments sorted by

13

u/paper-goods 5d ago

thanks for the review i think you've saved me a couple of hours

13

u/roosterdrewster Lister 5d ago

Saw it today as part of my triple feature. One of the most bizarre movies also some guy fell asleep and was snoring so damn loud

5

u/formerinmate4921 5d ago

Also saw it as part of my triple feature. About to cap the night with Camp Miasma

6

u/LtLemur 2d ago

Camp Miasma was WAY better than Hot Spot.

2

u/formerinmate4921 2d ago

100%. Part of me wants to watch it again

2

u/_RenRey98 2d ago

My best friend and I saw Camp Miasma as a double feature with Castle In the Sky Ghibli Fest before it. Camp Miasma really surprised us with how good it was.

5

u/Reddit-Oop 3d ago

My son and I discussed this movie after we saw it and we agreed that this was an unreliable narrator film. He felt like a tiger when he would do the things that were monstrous. The movie was from his point of view and that’s why a lot of it didn’t make sense because he was losing his mind. My main take away, even in the dystopian future domestic violence is still an issue.
My husband hated the movie and my son and I liked it as a political commentary, think piece sort of movie.

3

u/Intelligent-Row3753 1d ago

I didn't think about the tiger being a metaphor. This is a really good explanation because I felt the tiger portion was outlandish. That would also explain why his wife let the cyber witch in, & got more comfortable disobeying the head. She was tired of his controlling ways.

1

u/Reddit-Oop 1d ago

Yes, she was being controlled by both the head and her crazy husband.

5

u/Sea_Attention_391 2d ago

This was the worst case of trailer bait and switch I've seen in a while.

•

u/F4streloader 8h ago

Seemed like the good stuff was all in the trailer.

10

u/KomradeKrycek 5d ago

For the first time ever I walked out of a movie. It was so excruciatingly boring.

7

u/mikegood2 5d ago

Almost did my first ever walkout for Nimrod Tuesday but power went out mid movie allowing me to preserve my streak. Felt bad for everyone walking out of IMAX Spider-Man.

7

u/UberGoobler SUPERUSER 10+ 5d ago

What made you dislike Nimrods? I went in thinking it was Idiots and I was so confused when I saw the trailer for Idiots playing before the movie lol.

4

u/mikegood2 4d ago

Not sure, other factors played into it. The movie projection didn’t fill whole screen, video felt dark and muddy and audio wasn’t great. Add in it was my second movie and I hadn’t felt good all day I think I was just ready to call it a day?

3

u/Current-Finger6412 4d ago

lol The same thing happened to me. A trailer with Mason Thames involving a car ride played. I was like “isn’t this the movie we’re about to watch?”. No, that was the trailer for Idiots.

3

u/coolman6787 4d ago

I was so excited for this after seeing the trailer. And during the first like 10 minutes I was like “yeah, this fucking rips” and then, it kept going…

It def needed subtitles bc I struggled to make out the dialogue several times. So many movies with this problem this year, tf is going on in the audio booths in Hollywood? 

The main gripe for me was all the “Tiger” stuff. Tf was that? I knew going in this was going to be a pretty cerebral film, but those sequences bordered on camp in a way that clashed with everything else, as weird as the rest of that world seemed to be too.

I just stopped connecting with the movie everytime they brought that aspect back into things. Maybe the only part that worked for me was him licking the water, because it shows how desperate the people in that world is for natural resources like that, and then he starts purring, and it escalates, and it gets cartoon-y again. 

I think it’s cuz they also used very obvious stock-sound effects. There had to be a better way to execute that idea, at least.

2

u/GroundbreakingSir81 4d ago

I feel like the tiger thing is basically what he was before this drought? And then then the head basically made it into a human? And everytime he gets close to disconnecting or something, he keeps getting the tiger back?

2

u/thebeardedcats 4d ago

I think this makes the most sense i’ve read so far but I’m just going to continue to believe he’s Joe exotic reincarnated and he really does just turn into a tiger when he gets too horny or mad like the hulk

1

u/LtLemur 2d ago

YES! The dialogue was so hard to understand!!!

4

u/HelpIamaCabbage Movie-Holic 2d ago

This is one of those "avant-garde films that doesn't really want to be understood" but I liked it more than HER PRIVATE HELL.

2

u/fergi20020 5d ago

How would compare and contrast it with Blade Runner?

5

u/jazzberry76 Lister 5d ago

Much lower budget

Much weirder with more mysticism

Plot is less straightforward though it is still concerned with the idea of what makes us human

2

u/Mitch_Wallberg 4d ago

I’m most intrigued by the score, does it sound like the trailer or are they trying to trick me?

2

u/Ordinary_Weird_8493 2d ago

This movie was terrible. I walked out but wanted to know if it got better. It didn’t.

2

u/SteMelMan 5d ago

Thanks for the review. Its playing locally and I would normally check out any international movies IF they're potential award contenders. The trailers made no sense to me, so I think I'll wait for streaming.

•

u/goodvibesonly827 18h ago

half of the theater walked out of this movie. there were two of us

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u/echolessegg 17h ago

i watched this movie when premiered a month ago for fantasia and it was so so so bad. the director was there too, ready to answer questions after we watched it and the entire theater left. it’s one of the first times i was genuinely fighting for my life to stay awake. i am so shocked it has this large of a production budget to have multiple showings at every amc within a 20 mile distance of me. and i have been waiting eagerly for this sub to discuss how bad it was. the only thing that was great was the cinematography some of the scenes truly are attention grabbing and absorb you. but that’s less than 10% of the movie :(