Alice Waddington

(On Cable TV, May 2020) There is something bold, and yet fuzzily vague about Paradise Hills that prevents it from being a much better film. Clearly, the incredible polish of the film’s eerie visuals can’t be argued against—the Alice in Wonderland-inspired set design of the film is exceptional (if increasingly repetitive—probably due to budget), and director Alice Waddington does a pretty good job at presenting an off-kilter fantastic premise. It’s in the substance that Paradise Hills falters. The plot device of young girls in a mysterious futuristic boarding school is close to a cliché by now, and genre-savvy viewers will immediately suspect something along the lines of an organ-harvesting farm. (That’s not the answer, but it’s not too far either.) Knowing that there’s something lurking under the surface makes much of the film’s first half fastidious to watch—sure, there are great images, but when are we going beyond the appearances? Alas, the second half doesn’t turn out to be much better—the overall purpose for the re-education boarding school is lame (or rather, it only makes sense in Paradise Hills’s self-righteous misandry, along with the gleefully murderous ending) and the ending belongs to the apparently acceptable “it’s okay to kill as long as the victims are men,” school of thought. The set design and costumes are terrific, but the worldbuilding is a mess—there are bigger hints not only that this is fantasy rather than science fiction, but also that the world outside the school is not really ours, raising all sorts of questions about what’s the intended level of fantasy here. Fortunately, the cast is good, and used appropriately: Milla Jovovich in particular is great as the headmistress, making good use both of her persona, but also of her age. Paradise Hills definitely outstays its welcome by its second half: the answers to the mysteries are disappointing, the ideological excesses of the story become obvious, the hermetic visuals lose their newness and the thorns sequence seems thrown in for atmosphere rather than consistency. (In other words, it’s useless.) Still, it’s not that bad—better than average for that kind of lower-budgeted Science Fictional film, and one that has higher ambitions than usual.