ARQ

So Netflix recently announced that in the next year they'd like 50% of their content to be original. Now for shows like Stranger Things, this sounds amazing... but after watching ARQ, this announcement makes me very worried.

ARQ is a very small film that focuses on a scientist named Renton (played by Robbie Amell). Renton wakes up one morning to a home invasion. A group of masked assailants tie up Renton and his former girlfriend Hannah (played by Rachael Taylor) and want to rob him. Well something goes

wrong and Renton ends up being killed. However, moments after he is killed he wakes up when he did right before the assailants had come in. He soon realizes that he's doing a Groundhogs Day and its all because of the ARQ engine he has been working on.

What follows is a really confusing low budget Edge of Tomorrow. The movie is centered in an apocalyptic world where an evil corporation called Torus has taken over and the only rebellion against it is a group called the Bloc. Does any of that really matter for the story? Not really to be honest.

The main vehicle of this movie is the same plot device that you've seen in Edge of Tomorrow and before that Groundhogs Day. Now I'm not opposed to people utilizing time travel to relive events

from the past multiple times, in fact that's what made Edge of Tomorrow so good. It took a concept that was done in Groundhogs Day and did it well if not better. So ARQ took on a big chance to try and make this an interesting take on the time travel story and it fell really flat.

I guess I have to give the movie some credit in that it had a budget of about 2 million dollars and everything was probably filmed in someones basement, but because of that you don't really get the feeling of epicness, size, or story of Edge of Tomorrow or Groundhogs Day.

But comparisons aside, I was trying really hard to keep up with the story because its pretty convoluted. People are on one side but then they're not, people start remembering things from previous loops of time and this could have been an interesting game of cat and mouse between Renton and the home invaders but it just wasn't fun the way it should have been.

And that kind of goes into the performances. First starting off with Robbie Amell.

I will give the Amell family some credit, they are blessed with decent looks. Robbie and Stephen both are known for just being the good looking protagonist types but they're not really that great of

actors. Granted all the actors in this movie don't have a lot to go off of but at least Rachael Taylor, or as I know her Trish from Jessica Jones, gave a little better of a performance. There was nothing spectacular about any performance in this movie. Robbie Amell is a wood board of an actor and Rachael Taylor doesn't have much to work with. The other guys, the bad guys are honestly pretty replaceable and a little hard to distinguish except for physical features like a beard, but that's not a good indicator for a character in my book.

ARQ is a hard movie for me to review because its very short and its a very small budget movie. I have to give it credit for trying, it really is going for something larger with a smaller budget and really utilizing someones basement in order to film the entire thing. I just think this movie could have had a better script and a better cast in order to give us a Netflix quality movie.

And that's the biggest issue I have with this movie. By itself its pretty harmless, however what it represents is a trend that we could see in future Netflix original films. I'm planning on watching Beast of No Nations soon to give an example of the best Netflix can give because without a doubt, Netflix can give us really good things. (See: Stranger Things, House of Cards, and the Marvel shows like Daredevil and Jessica Jones). But they've also been known to dole out so not so great things. My worry is, especially with Netflix saying they're going to move to 50% original content and they know they're not going to have home runs every time worries me.

If you've been keeping up with the blog, you know that I just started watching Designated Survivor and its the first show on Primetime television that I've started watching because the majority of my television has come from Netflix, HBO, and Hulu. These streaming services have doled out really good things and if they suddenly decide to go mediocre, I'm not exactly okay with this.

Is everything going to be mediocre like ARQ? No. I just don't think this is a great start.

But what do you think? Have you checked out ARQ? Is it good? Is it bad? Are you worried about Netflix moving to 50% original content? Comment and Discuss below! You can also send me your thoughts on Twitter @cmhaugen24 as well as send me your requests for movies I should review in the future. If you follow me on Twitter, you can get updates on future movie news and reviews coming out of this blog.

I'll leave you with this. I haven't seen most of these films but here's a short list of Hidden Gems on Netflix right now. Check them out and give me your thoughts. Which one of these should I do a review for? Enjoy!