A Little Trip to Heaven

With A Little Trip to Heaven, director Baltasar Kormákur – in his zeal to imbue the film with an innovative sense of style – overwhelms the viewer with increasingly oppressive visuals and a score that strikes all the wrong notes right from the get-go. There’s absolutely nothing subtle about Kormákur’s directorial choices, which serve only as a needless distraction from the storyline. That the plot is just as muddled as the film’s look certainly doesn’t help matters, and there are certain elements within Kormákur’s screenplay that are never resolved (ie what are we to make of the car crash that opens the movie?) Forest Whitaker (sporting a ridiculous, would-be midwestern accent that renders an unfortunate amount of his dialogue unintelligible) stars as an insurance investigator who is sent to a small town on assignment, where a shady husband and wife (played by Jeremy Renner and Julia Stiles) stand to inherit a million bucks if a questionable claim goes through. A large proportion of A Little Trip to Heaven makes absolutely no sense, but worse than that, it’s just not interesting. The film’s mystery is virtually impossible to follow, while the characters remain hopelessly under-developed – making it exceedingly difficult to care about any of this. The needlessly arty vibe only serves to exacerbate matters, and there’s little doubt that A Little Trip to Heaven‘s appeal is limited to fans of the director.

*1/2 out of ****