NOTE: This review contains spoilers. Should you decide to watch this tragedy of a film, beware that there is a certain plot development that just can’t be avoided when talking about this trash masterpiece.

Towards the beginning of Serenity, Baker Dill (Matthew McConaughey) is in a bar. He is talking to some of his compatriots from the fictional Plymouth Island, who are deriding him for failing to catch a particular fish, an enormous tuna that has evaded him for years. McConaughey throws back his drink and boldly states: “he has a name. His name is Justice” before walking out. It is at this point that the audience knows they are watching something special, a film so mindlessly bad, poorly-executed and extraordinarily trashy, it can only be seen to be believed. I sought out Serenity after hearing all the reactions towards it that cited it as some masterpiece of bad cinema – and despite not being someone that actively seeks out bad films, I was strangely drawn to this film. Everything about it pointed towards Steven Knight having made a spiritual successor to The Room, a personal favourite, and anyone who draws comparisons between the finest cult film of all time, and any other film should understand what a tall order this is. Unfortunately, Serenity did not come close to the unhinged chaotic brilliance of Tommy Wiseau’s iconic film, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t an entertaining piece of lurid garbage. I was kept firmly in my seat as I watched this glorious shipwreck of a “sexy noir” (as it was marketed), and in between near mental breakdowns at the complete lack of logic or consistent disregard for anything resembling a real plot, I found some profundity underlying this film: this is quite certainly one of those rare films that are so offensively, laughably and unquestionably bad, you just can’t resist it.

As we’ve said before, Serenity is set on Plymouth Island, which is just vague enough a name to prevent anyone from questioning if it exists or not. There appear to only be about a dozen people occupying the island, one of them being Baker Dill, who is a mysterious sailboat captain who earns a living through taking tourists on sun-soaked fishing excursions deep into the sea, normally accompanied by his moral sidekick and pretty competent first-mate, Duke (Djimon Honsou). One evening, while drinking at what appears to be one of only two businesses on the island, Dill is confronted by the past in the form of his ex-wife, Karen (Anne Hathaway), who has a serious request for her war veteran flame – she has remarried, and her new husband, Frank (Jason Clarke) is an abusive drunkard with heavy mob connections, asserting his rage upon his wife and the son she has with Dill. Her proposal is simple: she will pay Dill ten million dollars to take Frank out on his boat and just conveniently push him overboard, ending his life and his reign of terror. Confronted with the choice between honouring his own moral code, or making a quick buck, Dill is caught in a precarious position. It all changes when he realizes that everything is not what it seems – quite literally.

The big twist in Serenity is obviously that Dill died during the war in Iraq, and has been rebuilt as a character in a video game created by his gifted son, who is seeking out the courage to kill his stepfather. There are no words to describe precisely how absurd Serenity is, and even just looking at this plot synopsis, you’ll realize that there is no way that this film could be good in any way. I wish I could say that this film had a good premise or a promising concept – that would imply that there was anything redeemable about this film and that it just executed its ideas poorly. Its certainly not the case – from beginning to end, Serenity is just an unmitigated disaster that tries to include every possible genre it could into a pretty absurd premise already, resulting in the year’s most surreal and preposterous film. There were even points in this film where the thought that this film was not serious, but rather elaborate performance art crossed my mind. Everything points to this film being a ludicrous bundle of ill-conceived ideas and poorly-constructed genre filmmaking, and a complete lack of any discernible restraint or skill, on both sides of the camera. Serenity, in all honesty, is just the result of widespread incompetence and watching it is akin to watching a natural disaster in real-time. The only difference is, this time the viewers are the victims.

What is an enormous cinematic disaster without major stars in the leading role? Matthew McConaughey and Anne Hathaway, through what I assume was the inability to read, agreed to play the leading roles in this disastrous film that sees both of them hitting a new low in their respective careers. Both of them are certainly very gifted and have made it clear over the years that they deserve their fame, as they often do deliver decent performances, even when the film around them isn’t up to their standards. The problem is, Serenity is not only not up to their standards, but it also isn’t up to the standards of any self-respecting actor. To call these characters cardboard cut-outs is an insult to the cardboard cut-out industry. Steven Knight (who is not a bad writer or director in his own right) seemed to have concocted this film and these characters after attending a Screenwriting 101 class at a low-level community college. It is almost as if he was following the cues out by decades or poor action film archetypes that we have recently started to abandon, only to have them brought back with ferocity in Serenity. These characters are so poorly-written, not even the twist that they are all part of a video game can compensate for the complete dismissal of meaningful character development, and the fact that those involved in the creation of this film did not put even an iota of effort into making them seem even close to human.

It isn’t clear who between the two has it worse in Serenity. McConaughey, who worked so hard in recent years to be taken seriously as an actor, is receding back into the exact kind of putrid, mindless heroic performance that made him such a laughingstock in the first place. Knight seems to be entirely unaware of everything the actor did after 2012 and rather marathoned his earlier work over the course of one adrenaline-fueled evening, and constructed a character solely out of the worst parts of each of those performances. Hathaway is also subjected to incredible disrespect, as Knight gives her the role of a femme fatale that doesn’t only dishonour the extraordinary talents of the actress, serves to be a complete dismissal of anything resembling decent portrayal of women in these kinds of performances. Hathaway does nothing in this film, having only two alternating emotions: shrill and hysterical, and seductive and manipulative. These are two actors that deserved much better than these ill-formed archetypes that are not nearly as interesting as they would appear to be, and isn’t even interested in them enough to allow them to have fun. Serenity was clearly a laborious experience for both of them, and the only saving grace is that they do try their best and that the problem doesn’t sit with them, but with the script that didn’t respect them enough to give them anything even halfway decent. However, if we are talking about disrespect, we need to mention the otherwise delightful Diane Lane, who does nothing other than sleep with McConaughey and look out windows, which is the extent of her performance, which is downright criminal.

If you can get past the almost non-existent story that governs the film, Serenity actually becomes quite entertaining in its own way. This is the epitome of “so bad, it’s good” – and considering it did so much poorly, it’s only appropriate that the one thing it does well is exactly what it was trying to avoid.  Knight seemed intent on making some concoction that blended the suspense of Hitchcock, the allure of film noir and the epic scope of the great adventure films of previous eras, asserted very heavily onto a framework inspired by Knight reading the online summary for Moby Dick (I’ll resist the temptation to make a joke here). Yet, he fails on absolutely all of them, and Serenity falters on both a narrative and tonal level, mainly because it never knows under which genre it should fall. Peppered with red herrings (or should we say, yellowfin tunas?), this film seems to be intent on leading us somewhere without actually knowing where it wants to go – it introduces characters who are supposedly important, but who we actually never see (the number of times Consuela and Dr Bob are mentioned in this film could make for an entertaining drinking game), and there are so many narrative threads that are entirely pointless. Knight never seems interested in addressing these problems, and rather seems to think that the ludicrous twist would somehow explain everything, only to have it complicate it even more. For every time Serenity thinks it is taking a step forward, it recedes back a thousand yards, eventually just becoming a confusing, disorganized jumble of misguided ideas. It would actually be entertaining if it wasn’t so incredibly frustrating.

Serenity is a film that absolutely must be experienced first-hand. Nothing can ever do this film justice, and in many ways, we have to admire Steven Knight for the conviction through which he was willing to believe that what he was making was actually even close to watchable, and not a heavy-handed, uncomfortable mess. To its credit, Serenity is entertaining, but only because watching how it disregards absolutely everything and navigates down a path of complete tonal and narrative inconsistency is morbidly fascinating, so it wouldn’t be classified as a waste of time in any way. It is a remarkably rancid film, one that doesn’t have the good sense to demonstrate restraint or any form of intelligence opting for excess and a ridiculous storyline that sees a pair of great actors giving career-worst performances, and a plot that makes absolutely no sense, which would be boring had this film not been unintentionally hilarious at the same time. Serenity is an extremely silly film, but you just can’t look away, and it takes on a certain charm – perhaps not one you normally associate with a film, but rather with a painting done by a disinterested toddler – in fact, I’m pretty sure a disinterested toddler could’ve made a better film than this. Actually, I’d like to believe one did. At least then it would make some sense.