Notes on Assassination Nation

Assassination Nation was the subject of exhausted complaint on Sunday Breakfast with Patrick Doyle.

Not since M Night Shyamalan went wrong has been it so clear that a director should not write his own scripts but instead bring his considerable stylistic verve to bear on someone else’s better script. There are scenes here that bring to mind Orson Welles’ 1946 movie The Stranger, especially the highlight of this entire film where a camera tracks around and up and down and all about a house as vigilantes prepare to attack. And yet these moments are housed in a screenplay that is simply appalling. Tweaking Public Enemy provides a better title for this tiresome lecture masquerading as satirical horror – Fear of a Woke Nation.