''The Discovery'' is a 2017 British-American
romantic science fiction
Science fiction (sometimes shortened to Sci-Fi or SF) is a genre of speculative fiction which typically deals with imaginative and futuristic concepts such as advanced science and technology, space exploration, time travel, parallel unive ...
film, directed by
Charlie McDowell
Charles Malcolm McDowell (born July 10, 1983) is an American film director and screenwriter. He is most known for his film ''The One I Love (film), The One I Love'' (2014).
Early life
McDowell was born on July 10, 1983, in Los Angeles, Californi ...
from a screenplay by himself and Justin Lader. It stars
Rooney Mara
Patricia Rooney Mara ( ; born April 17, 1985) is an American actress. She has received various accolades, including a Cannes Film Festival Award for Best Actress, in addition to nominations for two Academy Awards, a British Academy Film Award, ...
,
Jason Segel
Jason Jordan Segel ( ; born January 18, 1980) is an American actor, comedian, producer and screenwriter. He is best known for his role as Marshall Eriksen in the CBS sitcom ''How I Met Your Mother'', as well as for his work with director and pr ...
,
Robert Redford
Charles Robert Redford Jr. (born August 18, 1936) is an American actor and filmmaker. He is the List of awards and nominations received by Robert Redford, recipient of various accolades, including an Academy Awards, Academy Award from four nomi ...
,
Jesse Plemons
Jesse Plemons (; born April 2, 1988) is an American actor. He began his career as a child actor and achieved a career breakthrough with his major role as Landry Clarke in the NBC drama series '' Friday Night Lights'' (2006–2011). He subseque ...
,
Riley Keough
Danielle Riley Keough ( ; born May 29, 1989) is an American actress, notable for being the daughter of musicians Lisa Marie Presley and Danny Keough, and granddaughter of actress Priscilla Presley and singer Elvis Presley, and starting a succes ...
, and
Ron Canada
Ronald Ellis Canada (born May 3, 1949) is an American actor with a specialty in portraying judges and detectives. He is best known for '' One on One'' (2001–2004), ''The Shield'' (2003–2004), and '' Lone Star'' (1996).
Career
Following ...
.
The film had its world premiere at the
Sundance Film Festival
The Sundance Film Festival (formerly Utah/US Film Festival, then US Film and Video Festival) is an annual film festival organized by the Sundance Institute. It is the largest independent film festival in the United States, with more than 46,66 ...
on January 20, 2017. It was released on March 31, 2017, by
Netflix
Netflix, Inc. is an American subscription video on-demand over-the-top streaming service and production company based in Los Gatos, California. Founded in 1997 by Reed Hastings and Marc Randolph in Scotts Valley, California, it offers a fil ...
.
Plot
An interviewer questions Thomas Harbor, the man who scientifically proved the existence of an
afterlife
The afterlife (also referred to as life after death) is a purported existence in which the essential part of an individual's identity or their stream of consciousness continues to live after the death of their physical body. The surviving ess ...
, a discovery that led to an extremely high
suicide
Suicide is the act of intentionally causing one's own death. Mental disorders (including depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, personality disorders, anxiety disorders), physical disorders (such as chronic fatigue syndrome), and s ...
rate. The interviewer asks Harbor if he feels responsible, and he says no. Directly after, a film crew member kills himself on air.
On the second anniversary of the discovery, Harbor's son Will travels on a ferry where he meets Isla. They have a conversation and Will notes Isla looks very familiar. He says he is upset people keep killing themselves, while Isla thinks it's an easy way out. Will shares a memory he had while being dead for a minute, where he saw a young boy at a beach.
Will's brother Toby picks him up and drives him to an isolated mansion where their father is continuing his research. Will notes the large number of helpers, who Toby says used to be suicidal and now have a new purpose. Will meets Lacey and Cooper, his father's aides. Thomas is periodically "put under" and revived while hooked to various machines. When they speak, Will blames Thomas for starting a cult and for the high suicide rate. Will announces his intention to get Thomas to recant his statement about the afterlife and stop the suicides.
Later, Will sees Isla on the beach preparing to commit suicide. He barely saves her and brings her to the mansion, where she is taken in. At a later meeting with the occupants, Thomas reveals his new work - a machine that can record what people see in the afterlife.
To test the machine, Toby, Will and Isla steal the corpse of Pat Phillips from the
morgue
A morgue or mortuary (in a hospital or elsewhere) is a place used for the storage of human corpses awaiting identification (ID), removal for autopsy, respectful burial, cremation or other methods of disposal. In modern times, corpses have cus ...
. Will reveals to Isla the reason for his resentment towards Thomas: his mother killed herself when Thomas was too obsessed with his work to care about her.
Phillips' corpse is hooked to the machine, but nothing happens. After everyone leaves, Will undoes his earlier sabotage on the machine. Immediately the screen shows a video sequence of Pat Phillips driving to a hospital, visiting someone and fighting with a woman there. Will visits the hospital, but finds the hallway from the video gone.
During a
meeting
A meeting is when two or more people come together to discuss one or more topics, often in a formal or business setting, but meetings also occur in a variety of other environments. Meetings can be used as form of group decision making.
Defini ...
, Thomas confronts Lacey about revealing to others about the failed test and expels her from the mansion. Will shows Isla the recording, theorizing that the machine records memory rather than the afterlife. They find a record of Pat Phillips' father, who died in the hospital. Further investigations reveals the events in the recording don't match what actually happened. Pat never visited his dying father in the hospital.
Isla confides in Will that she had a son, who died while she was asleep. Isla and Will grow closer together and share a kiss, which is interrupted by Toby.
Together they rush to Thomas, who is hooked to the machine. They observe he is seeing the night their mother killed herself, except that Thomas stops her. They are able to revive Thomas, who concludes the afterlife is an alternate version of their existing life, only with different choices made. They agree to destroy the machine, as this revelation would provoke millions of suicides by people wanting to improve the lives they have. Thomas prepares to hold a speech, which is interrupted by Lacey shooting Isla, claiming she has just "relocated" her. Isla dies in Will's arms.
Later, a devastated Will hooks himself up with the machine. He arrives back on the ferry, where he meets Isla again, who states this is a memory. It is revealed Will is living in a memory loop trying to prevent Isla's death and he restarts on the ferry every time. Isla says he saved her and they both will move on now. Although Toby and Thomas try to revive Will, he dies, promising Isla to remember her.
Will stands on the beach, where he sees a little boy and gets him out of the water. The little boy's mother, Isla, arrives and thanks Will. They don't recognize each other. After she leaves, he walks away, but as he starts to recall who Isla is, he stops and slowly looks back.
Cast
*
Rooney Mara
Patricia Rooney Mara ( ; born April 17, 1985) is an American actress. She has received various accolades, including a Cannes Film Festival Award for Best Actress, in addition to nominations for two Academy Awards, a British Academy Film Award, ...
as Isla
*
Jason Segel
Jason Jordan Segel ( ; born January 18, 1980) is an American actor, comedian, producer and screenwriter. He is best known for his role as Marshall Eriksen in the CBS sitcom ''How I Met Your Mother'', as well as for his work with director and pr ...
as Will Harbor
*
Jesse Plemons
Jesse Plemons (; born April 2, 1988) is an American actor. He began his career as a child actor and achieved a career breakthrough with his major role as Landry Clarke in the NBC drama series '' Friday Night Lights'' (2006–2011). He subseque ...
as Toby Harbor
*
Riley Keough
Danielle Riley Keough ( ; born May 29, 1989) is an American actress, notable for being the daughter of musicians Lisa Marie Presley and Danny Keough, and granddaughter of actress Priscilla Presley and singer Elvis Presley, and starting a succes ...
as Lacey
*
Robert Redford
Charles Robert Redford Jr. (born August 18, 1936) is an American actor and filmmaker. He is the List of awards and nominations received by Robert Redford, recipient of various accolades, including an Academy Awards, Academy Award from four nomi ...
as Thomas Harbor
*
Ron Canada
Ronald Ellis Canada (born May 3, 1949) is an American actor with a specialty in portraying judges and detectives. He is best known for '' One on One'' (2001–2004), ''The Shield'' (2003–2004), and '' Lone Star'' (1996).
Career
Following ...
as Cooper
*
Mary Steenburgen
Mary Nell Steenburgen (; born February 8, 1953) is an American actress, comedian, singer, and songwriter. After studying at New York's Neighborhood Playhouse in the 1970s, she made her professional acting debut in 1978 Western comedy film ''Goin' ...
as Interviewer
Production
In October 2015, it was revealed that
Rooney Mara
Patricia Rooney Mara ( ; born April 17, 1985) is an American actress. She has received various accolades, including a Cannes Film Festival Award for Best Actress, in addition to nominations for two Academy Awards, a British Academy Film Award, ...
and
Nicholas Hoult
Nicholas Caradoc Hoult (born 7 December 1989) is an English actor. His List of roles and awards of Nicholas Hoult, body of work includes supporting work in big-budget mainstream productions and starring roles in Independent film, independent p ...
had been cast in the film, with
Charlie McDowell
Charles Malcolm McDowell (born July 10, 1983) is an American film director and screenwriter. He is most known for his film ''The One I Love (film), The One I Love'' (2014).
Early life
McDowell was born on July 10, 1983, in Los Angeles, Californi ...
directing from the script, co-written with Justin Lader, and Alex Orlovsky and James D. Stern producing under their Verisimilitude and Endgame Entertainment banners, respectively.
In March 2016, it was revealed that
Robert Redford
Charles Robert Redford Jr. (born August 18, 1936) is an American actor and filmmaker. He is the List of awards and nominations received by Robert Redford, recipient of various accolades, including an Academy Awards, Academy Award from four nomi ...
and
Jason Segel
Jason Jordan Segel ( ; born January 18, 1980) is an American actor, comedian, producer and screenwriter. He is best known for his role as Marshall Eriksen in the CBS sitcom ''How I Met Your Mother'', as well as for his work with director and pr ...
had joined the cast of the film, with Segel replacing Hoult who had to drop out due to scheduling conflicts.
That same month,
Riley Keough
Danielle Riley Keough ( ; born May 29, 1989) is an American actress, notable for being the daughter of musicians Lisa Marie Presley and Danny Keough, and granddaughter of actress Priscilla Presley and singer Elvis Presley, and starting a succes ...
and
Jesse Plemons
Jesse Plemons (; born April 2, 1988) is an American actor. He began his career as a child actor and achieved a career breakthrough with his major role as Landry Clarke in the NBC drama series '' Friday Night Lights'' (2006–2011). He subseque ...
joined the cast.
Danny Bensi and Saunder Jurriaans composed the film's score.
Principal photography
Principal photography is the phase of producing a film or television show in which the bulk of shooting takes place, as distinct from the phases of pre-production and post-production.
Personnel
Besides the main film personnel, such as actor ...
began on March 28, 2016, in
Newport, Rhode Island
Newport is an American seaside city on Aquidneck Island in Newport County, Rhode Island. It is located in Narragansett Bay, approximately southeast of Providence, Rhode Island, Providence, south of Fall River, Massachusetts, south of Boston, ...
. Production concluded on May 1, 2016.
Release
In June 2016,
Netflix
Netflix, Inc. is an American subscription video on-demand over-the-top streaming service and production company based in Los Gatos, California. Founded in 1997 by Reed Hastings and Marc Randolph in Scotts Valley, California, it offers a fil ...
acquired global distribution rights to the film, with a planned 2017 release. The film had its world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival on January 20, 2017. The film was released on March 31, 2017.
Reception
''The Discovery'' received mixed reviews from film critics. It holds a 46% approval rating on review aggregator website
Rotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes is an American review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee, and Stephen Wang ...
, based on 63 reviews, with a
weighted average
The weighted arithmetic mean is similar to an ordinary arithmetic mean (the most common type of average), except that instead of each of the data points contributing equally to the final average, some data points contribute more than others. The ...
of 5.60/10. The website's critics consensus reads: "''The Discovery'' looks fascinating on paper, but in spite of its thought-provoking premise and starry ensemble, it's a disappointing case of untapped potential." On
Metacritic
Metacritic is a website that review aggregator, aggregates reviews of films, TV shows, music albums, video games and formerly, books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted arithmetic mean, weighted average). M ...
, the film holds a rating of 54 out of 100, based on 19 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews".
Dennis Harvey of ''
Variety
Variety may refer to:
Arts and entertainment Entertainment formats
* Variety (radio)
* Variety show, in theater and television
Films
* ''Variety'' (1925 film), a German silent film directed by Ewald Andre Dupont
* ''Variety'' (1935 film), ...
'' gave the film a generally negative review, saying "Though ''The Discovery'' starts out with a great premise, its mystery dissipates over a somewhat tepid course as the concept ultimately heads in a direction we've seen many times before" and criticized the chemistry between Segel and Mara.
References
External links
*
*
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Discovery, The (film)
2017 films
2017 independent films
2017 romance films
2017 science fiction films
2010s English-language films
American independent films
American science fiction romance films
British independent films
British science fiction romance films
Endgame Entertainment films
English-language Netflix original films
Films about the afterlife
Films about suicide
Films set in country houses
Films shot in Rhode Island
2010s American films
2010s British films