ARQ

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ARQ had its world premiere at TIFF and was sufficiently popular that Sean and I tried but failed to get tickets. It’s a damn good thing we didn’t get them because if I had paid money to see this piece of shit, I’d be in a REAL rage right now, the likes of yet we’ve yet to see on Assholes Watching Movies.

arq_01.jpgIt sounds promising on paper: a dystopian thriller meets sci-fi Groundhog Day. The protagonists, Renton and Hannah, keep waking up in bed when a bunch of bad guys burst in on them. Things don’t go well. But every time Renton gets shot in the face, they wake up in bed again, to do it all over, though not necessarily with better results.

The gimmick wore off cinematically long before it evaporated on screen. Even screwball Bill Murray cottoned on to the trick quicker than this guy. The bad guys are ostensibly there to steal scripts, but it’s soon evident that Renton’s invention, the ARQ, is much more valuable…and it’s inconveniently causing a time loop.

I mentioned before that we failed to get tickets. How then did we see it? It’s on Netflix. That’s right. Just a few days after making it’s $25-a-head, world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival, it’s airing on Netflix for free. Even at that low price, though, it arq_03isn’t worth it. The dialogue put me off immediately. It has the look and feel of the kind of television show I would never watch. Even worse, it ends like it’s the pilot of a TV show that hopes to continue this mystery in vague and infuriating terms for the next 6 years. It isn’t, though. It genuinely believes itself to be a whole movie. Don’t believe it, not for a second: ARQ is to be avoided at all costs. Keep swiping left.

 

 

 

Looking for something more satisfying on Netflix? Try

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22 thoughts on “ARQ”

    1. Jay Post author

      It’s not super well explained, but it’s whatever contraption this guy invented that is now causing a time loop – it has perpetual motion\energy or something like that.

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  3. Valentina

    Lol just came upon it yesterday whilst looking for something to watch, and at first was sure it was a TV show. Then as it became clear it was getting longer we thought it was perhaps the pilot of a TV Show, one that would then show how this ARQ would become valuable for the war and so on. So by the time it was over I was mostly wondering where I’d seen the protagonist boy before, and he was Firestorm on Arrow, and yes he’s the cousin of cutie pie Stephen Amell. I thought his complete lack of expression and jawline was perfect for a videogame, so again I assumed this was going to be the beginning of a videogame-ish TV show. I was wrong of course. We did comment on how extremely low budget it was, and wondered where it’d end up. Why there was a circle round the house, and why that wouldn’t immediately cancel any chance of the ARQ ever being useful to anybody, considering it then didn’t change time and it didn’t provide endless energy either, and why it was petrified left me at a bit of a loss. And why they would “keep trying” (having established that the ARQ is basically useless), rather than just go to the safe house and escape the loop, was beyond me. I ended up agreeing with Sonny, better one to win than nobody wins, just to see something actually happen. Shame though, I did like her in Jessica Jones. And it could have gone somewhere interesting. But paying for it to watch it at the cinema? No, that’s taking the piss.

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  13. ruth

    I actually just saw the trailer the other day and was immediately put off by it! It’s got that guy who’s the cousin of the guy from Arrow? He was in The Flash I think, can’t act his way out of a paper bag. Glad to hear you didn’t pay anything to see this, I wouldn’t see it even if someone paid me [well unless Sam Riley wanted to go with me that is, so I could just stare at him the whole time] 😛

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