Did you know that Awkwafina was in a movie that was released after The Farewell, but it never made it to a theater near me? What a marketing gift gone to waste. Movies have been promoted with far less going for it. Let me assure you that Paradise Hills was actually pretty good with a wide margin in between it and the worst movies of 2019, some of which I sadly saw in theaters, including Glass, Hellboy, Pet Sematary, Peterloo, Tolkien, Replicas, Three Peaks, Under the Silver Lake, Rocketman, It Chapter Two or Star Wars: Episode IX-Rise of Skywalker. I would have paid for this one and left happy, but settled by seeing it as soon as it was released on DVD.
Paradise Hills is a genre bender with a fairy tale logic, sci-fi horror element. Alice Waddington in her directorial debut unapologetically refuses to explain the backstory for her universe, which is a dizzying mix of futuristic and Baroque gothic elements with a heavy dose of Baz Luhrmann if he interpreted Alice in Wonderland and Pedro Almodovar’s Under the Skin. Think spa retreat from hell where you go if becoming a Stepford Wife is appealing and insane asylum treatments are your thing.
Paradise Hills is about Uma’s transformation from unwilling to submissive bride. I love Emma Roberts from Adult World and Scream Queens so even though Uma’s story is a bit tropey with a girl power twist, girl being forced to marry a wealthy man, I was willing to go along with it. She makes friends with her roommates, content Chloe, whom Patti Cake$’ Danielle Macdonald plays, and anxious Yu, whom Awkwafina plays. Uma even has an unspoken, under-utilized attraction to Amarna, a pop star who is treated like a glorified ATM. Milla Jovovich as The Duchess runs the island makeover prison where the girls (ages are unclear and unstated) are kept for two months then will emerge acceptable to their families. How? Superficially everything seems luxurious and ideal, but when something goes wrong, it is blamed on technical difficulties with a barely restrained menace of physical violence and reprisals under the surface.
Paradise Hills’ story needs work. I hate when movies open with the how we got here trope, and the bookends in this film never quite jell. The story should have been linear. I understand that Marcus’ storyline needed to be in the story to solidify the rebuke against wanting to be rescued, but a brief flashback was not enough to explain why Uma trusted him. Hearing about what happens at night sort of deflates the suspense when we finally witness it. Show, don’t tell. Although I know that the big reveal is a call for solidarity in a strict caste system, it felt rushed and underdeveloped. Also I think that I may be tired of films subconsciously exploiting upper and middle class anxiety over losing privilege, which is usually conflated with identity and self, but I think that I need a counterbalance of cinematic representations of the opposite: the lack of solidarity among women due to class and traditional gender norms. I understand that this movie is aspirational and a call to arms for women to unite, but it is usually women with more privilege who are more likely to take or betray to accrue more. For the denouement to work, it needs to earn it.
Even though I prefer Roberts as an actor because I am more familiar with her work, Paradise Hills may have worked better if Chloe’s story was centralized. Her story is the least tropey. She is very affable and was happy to be there. She likes makeovers and hanging out with friends even if she is a little hungry. Her character would have fleshed out the men of the institution’s story more instead of making them indistinguishable storm troopers. I know that it is more instinctual to root for the girl who is rebellious at the outset, but having a character gradually get outraged at the gravity of her predicament dawns on her could have been more powerful. Also giving her Amarna as a love interest works better than when Marcus is dropped in like a boring, underdeveloped afterthought because it would make her curious about the institution. All the abrupt stop and start escape plans sucked the momentum out of the plot whereas Chloe’s emotional journey would have a natural energy as it unfurled and mirrors most girls’ experience as they get older and feel betrayed. When Chloe finally gets angry, it is such an unexpected, glorious moment in the movie because we do not expect her to be comfortable with that emotion and act on it. It felt completely unrealistic for her character to need Roberts to try and rescue her.
I love Jovovich’s character as the villain of Paradise Hills. What kind of world are we in? I am not going to spoil it, but it is completely unexpected considering what we see up to that point. It is a world ruled by science, money and technology. I wanted more, but I know that an explanation may have destroyed the magic of the moment. Let’s just say that Jovovich is underappreciated and definitely took her time on the set of Resident Evil and Hellboy seriously. She is gorgeously evil. Is Mother an actual person? Her connection to the physical integrity of the actual island fascinated me.
It is worth watching Paradise Hills for the spectacle. If you cannot stand the storyline, which could be a mess due to poor editing, then you may find it derivative and unoriginal, but the way that so many differing elements were arranged results in a unique, unsettling tone that carried me over the narrative flaws. The production and costume design are worth the price of admission. For instance, imagine if Kubrick’s brainwashing scene in A Clockwork Orange took place on a lone carousel horse that only goes up and down, and once up, you get immersed in a bubble that can be a commercial of what others want you to believe or be. The oneric nature of the imagery does its best to cover the narrative plot holes, but the actual camera direction feels fairly basic. The lush visual feast will help you not notice it.
It is a little problematic that resistance is unintentionally depicted as being bulimic though, but I loved the imagery of constant infantilization of girls/young women. There was one scene when Amarna is encouraged to sing, then admonished to stop, but I have no idea why. The song makes sense in the bookend scenes, but discovering its origins confused me because it does not appear to have a double meaning.
Paradise Hills may be a bit of a rushed, undercooked mess, but if you are into weird genre mash ups with girls &/or women characters taking center stage, you may still enjoy it though its lessons are a bit cliché and unprepared to confront the ugly socioeconomic realities as they exist versus what we imagine. At its heart, I do appreciate the dismissal of the possibility that one woman can achieve feminine perfection, but more thought should have been given to how this theme fits into this universe.