Parents' Guide to Wounds

This movie is a noble effort that doesn't quite mesh or satisfy. The acting is very good across the board, and it's clear that the writer-director Babak Anvari is trying to use the horror genre to comment on how dissipation from within and the failed relationships that stem from that can be just as horrifying and deadly as any supernatural apparition, but the result feels like a trick on the audience, an endless prank as the film toys with any and all standard conventions of horror movies. It's an ambitious attempt, but it doesn't quite succeed.

Indeed, the ultimate takeaway, after getting past the initial reactions to the head-scratching ending of the film, is that the ambition in expressing the deeper meanings to Wounds gets in the way, rather than amplifying the movie. Besides comments on dissipation, the movie also explores toxic male entitlement, the malaise and uncertainty so many post-college adults feel about their future and present, and the life-sucking qualities of too much time on the internet. It's all interesting and worthy of exploration, but so much of it competes and gets lost in the homages to, say, William S. Burroughs and David Cronnenberg. Furthermore, even with these influences, it starts to become obvious that David Lynch, years ago, used Twin Peaks to explore the central themes of Wounds, and engaged in similar genre-bending mischief.