Watch | 21. Apr 2021

The Nest - A Thriller About Nothing, Really

Maybe, at the very end, the producers realized that neither the story telling nor the whole story in the first place was worth a movie.

Because, at the end, what is to say about a guy who pretends to be rich and is not. Keeps his family out of the situation. Lies to his wife. Since "Death Of A Salesman" came out first 1949, we know there is something deeply vulnerable about a man without professional success.

Arthur Miller´s message then was about how normal people are excluded form the American Dream - in "The Nest" a highly ambitious man, urging his family to move from job opportunity to job opportunity, strongly believes in that dream. As in: your personal luck is based on your personal belongings - my cars, my horses, my country mansion. Only the best schools for the children and fur for the Mrs.

Alas, the dream does not really come true. End of the story.

Obviously, everybody involved in the movie realized too late how boring that movie came out - even though Jude Law gave his best as a mix of Willy Loman and Patrick Bateman from Bret Easton Ellis´"American Psycho" - they obviously decided to produce a trailer promising you suspense and drama, even calling the whole thing "thriller".

So you sit and wait for almost two hours for NOTHING to really happen. Not counting a teenager vomiting on expensive carpets, a wife getting drunk and then dancing alone in a bar and a precious horse dying from mysterious circumstances.

Actually, a horse lover myself, that beautiful stallion kept me tense during the whole screening - only to never find out what really happened at the end. When husband and wife, daughter and son gathered at the table to have family breakfast.

For richer or poorer - is that the message? Daddy cries and everybody understands how hard his life is?

You would not even want to know. Because: He will probably go on with his bullshit lifestyle. She will get either a divorce or a drinking problem, the children will become little drug addicts and losers.

We will never find out. Because, there is no studio on the whole planet to finance "The Nest, Part Two", ever.

"The Nest" is getting into Swiss theatres only now, after having premiered during Zurich Film Fest last year