As a movie I think is good, Zone of Interest is nigh on impossible to rate. Is it a “good” movie? Yes. Is it a movie I’d ever want to watch again? No. Did it maintain my rapt attention for its entire runtime? No. Did it achieve it’s goals as a movie imparting information? Yes. Did it get its point across? Yes.

The movie works… it just does so at an exorbitant runtime. It gets its point across quickly enough and then just chugs along remaking the same point over and over again.

Yes. I get it. It’s The Banality of Evil: The Movie. I get it, I get it.

The movie doesn’t tell you what it is or what’s going on… but I knew going in that it’s about Nazi Commandant and his family living a blissful life on the other side of the wall of Auschwitz. They live life with only hints of the atrocities going on a few dozen yards away. We hear gunshots and commands, we see trains, we see smokestacks… but the movie otherwise chooses to ignore all that as it shows us bland images of a happy family. There’s no story structure, no dramatic events… just individual moments, some of which let us know these sunshiney people are perfectly aware of the evil they are part of. They just don’t care.

It gets that point across in the first ten or twenty minutes… if you didn’t know what was going on, it’d probably take about that long to figure it out. And then it just keeps going for another hour and twenty. Which surely is the point… that while we sit there in the dark, watching happy, shiny people ignore the evil around them, we just have to endure their endless, insipid prattle. And sit there and keep sitting there and omg would this movie end? In a good way. It’s making it’s point successfully. And I felt trapped in my seat.

Was I having a good time? Not really. Was I bored? Sometimes. Did I get the point? Yes. Did the movie work? Absolutely.

Score: 82