Movie Review: 'The Giant' is a Confounding Murder Mystery

The Giant is a baffling mess of arty pretension, horror imagery, and strong intentions ultimately amounting to nothing. This divisive teen horror movie has strong elements including a compelling visual style and a crime story at the heart that should help give shape to the flights of artistic fancy. Unfortunately, The Giant is so muddy, laconic and confounding that it’s difficult to surmise what the actual story of the movie is.

The Giant stars Odessa Young as Charlotte. It’s been just about a year since Charlotte’s mother shocked her daughter by taking her own life in a shocking and public fashion. Since that day, Charlotte’s life has been a blur. Her boyfriend, Joe (Ben Schnetzer), moved away with his parents and has barely been in contact with her since he left. Charlotte’s father, the local Chief of Police has grown distant and just as Charlotte is graduating from High School, he becomes embroiled in a case that will consume his time.

That case dovetails with Charlotte and her group of friends as they are playing out the final days of their High School life. One night as Charlotte and her friends are partying at a lake they hear screaming in the distance. Unable to determine from which direction the screaming is coming from, they decide to move on. At a local hangout Charlotte finds one of Joe’s closest friends, Brady (Danny Ramirez), looking haunted.

Brady claims that he and his date, Daphne (Taylor Hanks) struck a deer but the look on Daphne’s face seems to indicate something far worse. The next day, Daphne is killed in a fashion that matches a pattern of killings of girls Charlotte’s age. Did Brady kill her or was it the newly returned Joe, who pops up suddenly back in town and appears similarly haunted as Brady appeared.

The movie hints that beyond what happened to Charlotte's mother last summer she, Brady and Joe had an experience that may be related to the current series of deaths linked to a serial killer. Unfortunately, this is all my own conjecture as The Giant is mostly a baffling series of muddy visuals and indecipherable, often mumbled dialogue that leads only to further confusion as the movie progresses.

Odessa Young does a wonderful job of appearing lost, confused and disoriented. That said, she’s the lead character and her disorientation is often our disorientation. Charlotte hints at several different traumas she’s experienced over the year and how she’s taken to ignoring things and trying to enjoy the final days of her High School years. The traumas Charlotte has experienced have become a blur that appears to be bleeding into her day to day life.

The Giant was written and directed by David Raboy and he is an undoubtedly talented filmmaker with a strong sense of visual disorientation. That said, he’s gone a little too far in The Giant. The film is so in love with trippy style that it is nearly impossible to keep track of the story being told. The movie is called The Giant and I believe that is the moniker assigned to the serial murderer operating in the background of Charlotte’s story but do not ask me why the killer is called The Giant, I have no idea.

I also cannot tell you if I know the identity of the killer or what role the killer ultimately plays in Charlotte’s story. The story and style of The Giant are so confounding that I was throwing up my hands in confusion not long after the movie had begun. On top of the indecipherable story, the film is at times so dark, in the literal sense, that it is impossible to make out who is speaking and who they are speaking to. I tried cranking up the resolution to try to get a look but the muddy darkness is apparently a choice.

The Giant is a mixed bag. I think the director is a talented visual artist but his choices need to be clearer. I get that the movie is going for dream-like but there is a more coherent way to communicate dream-like imagery amid a story that people can actually follow. The Giant is at times maddeningly, surreally, incomprehensible and while that may be true of a dream it doesn’t make for a satisfying film watching experience.

The Giant will be available streaming rental on November 13th.