On Saturday afternoon I sat down on a small wooden chair, placing the backpack down in the corner of the South American restaurant, just after leaving the local cinema. It made a change from the usual haunt of the breakfast burrito and eggs florentine that usual follows a trip to see the latest cinematic masterpiece, and perhaps there were surprises to be had.

After some time perusing the menu, a feast fit for the eyes as well as the stomach was ordered, with cups of tea of course. What? We’re not barbarians, now excuse me while I change into my evening tuxedo!

What followed afterwards was a delight. A mixture of pulled meats, lentils, plantain with either sour dough bread or arepas which is a lovely fried bread when put together with salad and sauces. Even pictures of said food would not do it justice and brought back some wonderful memories of previous visits to South America. These dishes only served to lift your spirits in a wonderfully bright and warm environment, and to even enhance the dining experience, the staff were just a delight. Round off with a cup of tea and to be honest, it was a great surprise to find such a feast awaiting us in the confines of a small indoor market.

Why am I telling you this? Well, one simple reason; it’s about 100% more interesting than what happens in today’s film on the chopping block; The Lobster.

Winning several awards from various bodies around the world, this seems to be a prime example of Oscar Bait surely? It was released last year and now is available on DVD. Well I’m not even going to waste your time any further. This is one of the worse attempts at satire or indeed story I’ve ever witnessed. During the screening, it sent people to sleep, others walked out, and even those who stayed were compelled to look at what was happening on Facebook more than what was on screen.

If you want to read on about the film, then by all means but the more you read, the more you will get confused. There will be spoilers but seriously, it really won’t matter here.

Set during a time, which is never really massively made clear, the film after about 30 minutes and a horse shooting later (yes, this happens) gets to what the premise of what we’re supposed to know. People live in a city (according to the Internet, it’s Dublin), and if they end up alone for any reason at all, single people or indeed Widows are given 45 days to find a romantic partner before they are turned into an animal. Yes, an animal.

Why an animal, it’s never made clear. Why people alone are stigmatised, it’s never made clear. In fact it’s fair to say there’s a hell of a lot of context missing from this film. It’s almost like there was a whole other movie or book or dude flapping around white flags needed in order to explain what the hell is going on and why it was allowed to get to this point. The film just carries on regardless, giving us a list of rules, like you can’t chuck off custard if you need relief, but they are happy to get the hotel staff to dry hump you to ensure you can get an erection. Again, not a joke.

Any requests? Oh you’d like the film to stop? No, we can’t do that.

Don’t worry, you got some explanation about all this from Olivia Coleman who is running the Hotel where all this seems to take place. Though when Colin Farrell (his character is called David but it’s not even worth remembering for the rest of the review) turns up, his life gone to shit as a result of his wife leaving him for someone else. Oh joy! A a brief debate of whether or not to be hetrosexual, Colin turns up with his brother, who failed to find someone and is now a dog. A dog who for most part will just be background decoration but don’t worry, he has a big role later on.

Over the course of the next few minutes, we see how the prisoners / guests of the nameless hotel go through various things such as going to breakfast with one hand cuffed behind his back and attend a dance which features the most amazingly weird singing seen outside of Britain’s Got Talent. The BBC could learn a few tips from this film when the hotel staff act out various situations like choking to death and rape and how being with someone saves your life.

During these lovely events, Colin meets some friends which one, gets his hand burned because he was chucking custard. The other was braking his nose to ensure he could get into bed with a lifeless woman whose only attribute apparently was her nose bleeds randomly. Actually come to think of it, most of the characters are one dimensional and they only get together based on one identifiable trait. Why?

As you can tell, they really struggled to give their characters names.

But what if the useless lifeless boring f*cks of humanity can’t find that special someone right away? I really don’t care at this point, but you might. They can extend their stay by hunting escapees from the Hotel with tranquilizer guns. Each captured person gets you one extra day as a human being.

Again, not a huge amount of context has come over and so far, you pretty much are expected to go along with the insanity and it was rare to have more than a few minutes pass by before you were questioning why people were doing what they were doing. But as the film progresses on, it gets worse, accompanied by very dull plodding delivered narration by Rachel Weisz.

Colin Farrell, after coming back from golf and seeing that someone who was trying it on earlier try and kill herself unsuccessfully (screaming all the while too I might add) decides to seduce a woman who is more cold than Spock. All while delivering the lines as if they were reading a shopping list.

Thus seemingly begins a series of tests by said cold blooded b*tch to see if Colin Farrell is heartless. Sharing a jacuzzi, she feigns choking. As Colin just sits there and fails to care, she decides they are a good match. Yep.

Remember I wrote that the dog has a big role earlier? Well, this is it. After some soleless sex, The Spock B*tch kills the dog, just to see if there was a reaction from Colin Farrell. Apparently he shows emotion which is entirely understandable about his brother being killed and apparently this is unacceptable. She accuses him of lying about being dead inside and after some scuffles etc and some help from the hotel staff, She-Spock is turned into an animal. As well as the hotel staff member who helped Colin. Because of reasons.

We agreed to be in this. Remember that.

For fuck’s sake, it’s almost like everyone is in this is suffering from autism. Actually scrap that, everyone in this film have the mentality of three year olds.

Sorry, we’ll carry on now as the film just goes even more off the rails as Colin Farrell escapes the Hotel, joins the escapees and lives in the woods. Though it appears he just leaves one oppressive system for another as relationships are banned, and if sexy sh*t happens, they seem to either cut your lips or genitals. Not made up.

But no, this is when we finally see Rachel Weisz on screen and of course Colin wants to bugger her silly. They start having fun together in secret, create their secret comms system and pretend to be man and wife while wandering around the city with somehow obtained nice clothes, along with the Resistance Leader who soon sees them engaging in relations….as they all sit in the same room with her parents as they play musical instruments. Again, not making it up. How many more times am I going to write that?

So then before Colin and Rachel can escape and live together in the city we don’t know as Dublin, Rachel is blinded on purpose when the resistance leader makes an appointment with an eye doctor somehow. Completely over the top d*ck move for sure and entirely an insane way to deal with this, even more than the cutting punishments. But don’t worry, soon enough they escape to the city together and Colin wants to be with Rachel  by blinding himself with a steak knife. Or rather we don’t see that, we just leave it with Rachel sat down after some time.

What a complete pile of….I don’t even know what words would fit!

Quick, our stars are trying to escape from their contracted appearances in this crap!

I get what the theme was meant to be. This was supposed to take apart the relationship nature of humanity, and mock both sides of the divide where we are forced to find someone or forever find yourself in essence, consigned to an underclass; in this case, being animals. It was supposed to also ridicule those who try to rip apart relationships because they don’t agree with what goes on. The opening point of someone shooting the horse then actually had meaning in that perhaps, it was someone who cared for their brother or sister and was going to put them out of their misery, so they could finally rest.

It was clever in a few ways, that every time you saw an animal on screen, you knew that was someone else who never managed to find someone to fill the apparent void in their lives. When the single people brought to light the facade of people apparently happy in their enforced bondings, it was a fair point, if rather laboured. Perhaps if developed more, it would have found more of a focus. After all, what was the real message in the end? The plot seemed to just get thrown out once we were in the city and it just seemed to go on and on, boredom and disbelief firmly in place by that time.

Everything else that happened only left you angry. Angry that you sat through acting and delivery so wooden, with events that are just completely over the top and pointless, that perhaps they were just there for shock value. I don’t even really care what’s happening to everyone and it’s amazing that everyone is happy with the status quo once they are free from the hotel that they don’t even try to change why the system is the way it is. Nope, instead they go shopping.

Rotten tomatoes describes this as an acquired taste which if you get into it, provides a savory cinematic treat. I describe it as over the top dullness with extreme fucked up behaviour and I hope to never ever ever watch this crap ever again.