There are bad movies, and then there are movies that feel like they crawled out of an Icelandic bog, got drunk on fermented shark, and asked politely if they could waste two hours of your life. No Such Thing is firmly in the latter camp. Hal Hartley, indie darling of the ‘90s, took one look at Beowulf and thought, “You know what this needs? A drunk monster who sounds like he’s trying stand-up at an open mic, Sarah Polley wandering around in misery, and Helen Mirren cashing a paycheck.”
Spoiler: Beowulf did not need this.
Polley and the Pain Train
Sarah Polley plays Beatrice, a journalist whose fiancé is eaten by the Monster in Iceland. Now, any normal person would scream, weep, or maybe invest in therapy. But Beatrice? She just straps herself in for the cinematic equivalent of a root canal without anesthesia. On her way to the Monster, she survives a plane crash, gets brutal reconstructive surgery, and spends the rest of the film looking like she wishes she’d stayed in the wreckage.
The surgery subplot is supposed to be poignant, I think—a statement on resilience. Instead, it feels like the director shouting, “What if we broke her body and her spirit, just to make the audience equally uncomfortable?”
The Monster With the Mouth
Enter the Monster: Robert John Burke covered in rubber prosthetics, swearing like a sailor who stubbed his toe in 1953 and never got over it. He’s not scary. He’s not sympathetic. He’s basically your drunk uncle at Thanksgiving, except immortal and hairier. He spends the film moaning about how he wants to die while chain-smoking, guzzling liquor, and delivering monologues so tedious you’ll wish the government scientists would hurry up and kill you instead.
And yes, he killed Beatrice’s fiancé. But that’s barely relevant—this monster is less a villain and more a metaphor for Hartley’s hangover.
Helen Mirren, Phone-In Goddess
Helen Mirren shows up as “The Boss,” a TV executive who turns the Monster into a media spectacle. Watching Dame Helen play a cartoon villain in this mess is like seeing Shakespeare performed at Chuck E. Cheese. She sneers, she plots, she manipulates the Monster for ratings—and she looks like she’s calculating exactly how many zeroes are on her paycheck while doing it. Honestly, the real horror is realizing Mirren probably signed the contract after two glasses of wine and a bad agent pitch.
Science by Way of Torture Porn
So, the government wants to study the Monster. Fair enough. Except their experiments look like they were designed by a frat house on probation. They ridicule him, beat him in public, and hook him up to machines that appear to be leftovers from a high school science fair. One experiment literally involves people insulting him on the street to see what happens. Imagine if Area 51 captured an alien and then hired Reddit trolls as lab techs. That’s the vibe.
Meanwhile, Beatrice is torn between caring for this foul-mouthed sasquatch and wondering if she could hitchhike back to Toronto before the third act.
Enter Dr. Artaud, Exit Logic
Eventually, we meet Dr. Artaud, a “mad scientist” played by Baltasar Kormákur, who looks like he wandered in from another movie entirely—probably one that made sense. He has the secret to killing the Monster, naturally, but only after a whole subplot involving government conspiracies, Icelandic cult villagers, and enough melodrama to sink a Viking ship.
By the time Artaud wheels out his monster-killing contraption, I was rooting for it to accidentally blow up the entire cast and crew.
Romance? Sure, Why Not
Because this movie hates you, it tries to shoehorn in a tragic romance between Beatrice and the Monster. Yes, the same Monster who ate her fiancé and smells like whiskey-soaked gym socks. She kisses him goodbye before his big death scene, as if the audience needed one final reminder that this script was written on the back of a napkin during a depressive episode.
Sarah Polley is a phenomenal actress, but even she can’t sell kissing a creature that looks like a rejected Muppet with a nicotine addiction.
Death, or Blessed Silence
The climax involves flickering lights, a giant machine, and Beatrice staring lovingly at the Monster as he prepares to die. It goes on for so long I half-expected the credits to roll mid-scene out of mercy. Instead, we’re treated to a slow, agonizing goodbye that plays like an experimental student film about co-dependence.
When the screen finally goes black, it doesn’t feel like an ending. It feels like deliverance.
Hartley’s Folly
Hal Hartley is known for quirky, deadpan indie dramas. Why he thought he could tackle a Lovecraft-meets-Beowulf monster drama is anyone’s guess. The result is neither horror, nor fantasy, nor satire. It’s just… sludge. A tonal swamp where every attempt at profundity drowns under bad pacing, worse dialogue, and a monster costume that would embarrass a Halloween pop-up shop.
The film was booed at Cannes. Booed. Imagine being in France, the land of cinema snobs, and still managing to make people jeer like you’d just farted in church. That’s the legacy of No Such Thing.
Final Thoughts: No Such Thing as Good
In the end, No Such Thing is less about monsters and more about human endurance. Can you endure Sarah Polley suffering indignity after indignity? Can you endure Robert John Burke’s slurred nihilism? Can you endure Helen Mirren’s agent cashing her check while she wonders how quickly she can get back to London?
If you can, congratulations—you’re stronger than me.
