It’s rarely a good sign when a movie slated for release in October, a month annually populated by Best Picture contenders (A Star Is Born) and box office phenomenons (Venom), gets pushed all the way to January. January is typically the ceremonial dumping ground for films that studios wish to forget about. The hope is that enough people will emerge from their post-holiday idleness and spend their money on a (probably terrible) movie and, with any luck, that studio can turn a marginal profit.
You don’t really need to read the tea leaves here: Serenity, a movie genuinely described by writer-director Steven Knight as a “sexy fishing noir,” was originally scheduled to come out in October and finally arrived in theaters this weekend. If you watched only the trailer, you’d think you understand the basic premise: Matthew McConaughey is a fisherman on some tropical island who is approached by his ex-wife, Karen (played by Anne Hathaway), who’s willing to offer him $10 million if he will take her abusive, wealthy husband, Frank (Jason Clarke), out on his boat and dump him to feed the sharks. Sexy fishing noir actually seemed to track, and seemed like a fun enough time.
But then, a week before the release, Polygon reporter Karen Han described it to me as “deranged.” “Arrest Steven Knight,” she added. I didn’t want to know the details, but obviously, there was more to Serenity than meets the eye.
Well, having finally seen Serenity, let me just say: REOPEN ALCATRAZ AND GIVE STEVEN KNIGHT A LIFETIME SENTENCE. Nothing could’ve prepared me for Serenity—its ridiculous dialogue, fish-obsessed characters, and all-time bonkers plot twist. You could’ve offered me a thousand opportunities to guess what the movie’s really about, and I’d never have solved it. If you had told me the plot machinations of Serenity outright, I’d have politely asked to check your kitchen cabinets to ensure nothing was somehow laced with LSD. Serenity is an early and clear front-runner for WTF movie of the year.
Fair warning: From this point forward, everything about Serenity is going to be spoiled, in the order of the film’s bizarre narrative developments—which, conveniently, double as a rising scale of WTF moments leading all the way to the film’s conclusion. This is the five-step process of experiencing an instant so-bad-it’s-good classic.
1. Matthew McConaughey and the Moby Dick of Tuna
Baker Dill. That’s the name of McConaughey’s character in Serenity, a fisherman with a mysterious past living on Plymouth Island. Why does a tropical-looking island sound like a place you’d find off the coast of Massachusetts? Don’t worry, we’ll address that later.
Baker has a lot on his mind. Along with his first mate, Duke (Djimon Hounsou), he makes money taking tourists out into the ocean to fish every day—except he sometimes yanks fishing rods away from his clients if he thinks he’s spotted a giant bluefin tuna he’s obsessed with catching. This is his white whale, except that it’s a tuna. He names this tuna Justice for some reason.
Baker has tried so often and so hard to catch this fish that the other inhabitants of Plymouth Island chide him for it. The bartender at the only bar on the island calls it “a tuna that’s in your head.” Baker could be making way more money if he caught swordfish at night and sold them to the local fishing companies, but he makes do with the occasional tourist fishing trip—and if not, Baker side-hustles as a gigolo for Constance (Oscar nominee Diane Lane!), who also has a pet cat that always gets lost and seems to find its way to him. (Probably because he smells of fish.)
These details are essential only because for the first 20-odd minutes of Serenity, the film comes across as fishing propaganda with no discernible plot. That’s when Karen shows up and offers Baker the chance to kill her abusive husband for $10 million, the nonfinancial incentive being that Baker could potentially reunite with his estranged son, Patrick (Rafael Sayegh), who may or may not be regularly subjected to Frank’s abusive behavior. I imagine Baker was also considering a financially stable life in which he could spend all of his time searching for Justice the bluefin tuna.
2. Matthew McConaughey’s Ample Butt Screen Time
Perhaps because his side gig is being Diane Lane’s gigolo, perhaps because McConaughey has a roguish charm particularly appealing in the tropics, perhaps because Serenity has no chill whatsoever, we see a lot of this Oscar winner’s butt. It might command the screen more than poor Djimon Hounsou.
These are two good Baker-butt moments worth highlighting: Early in the film, Constance comes over to his place to look for her cat again. (It’s also worth noting: Baker lives in a refurbished shipping container.) But midway through his conversation with Constance, he spontaneously strips naked to “shower.” He then leaves his shipping container home and jumps off a cliff into the ocean; he floats serenely and thinks about his son, Patrick. The film then intercuts with Patrick at home playing a computer game—it’s implied he’s some kind of child prodigy who is good at coding stuff—and it seems like Baker has some kind of telepathic connection to his son. Neat!
But more to the point: dat ass. Boy, will you get to know all its curves. The other big Baker-butt moment occurs when Karen tries to convince him to kill her husband by seducing him on his boat. (This includes, despite the actors’ significant age gap, Karen reminiscing about the time Baker took her virginity at 16.) This is where the “sexy” in “sexy fishing noir” should be coming in, except there are two problems: One, McConaughey and Hathaway have no onscreen chemistry; two, they are almost fully clothed aside from the actor’s butt, and they essentially dry-hump on the dinky fishing boat.
3. Jason Clarke Doing the Most
As Frank, the shitty, abusive husband, Clarke wisely decides to fully embrace the camp. This is the best possible decision when your character dresses like a Miami Vice villain and insists that his wife call him “Daddy” in place of literally anything else.
I lost count of the “Daddy” utterances from Oscar winner Anne Hathaway. But Serenity wanted you to want Baker to throw Frank overboard. I was sold the minute he stepped foot on Plymouth Island after stealing Al Pacino’s wardrobe in Scarface.
4. Jeremy Strong, the Shifty Bespectacled Businessman With a Big Secret
Jeremy Strong, the no. 1 boy of Succession, spends most of Serenity running around Plymouth Island trying to catch up with Baker to talk to him about something. His character, Reid Miller, is on the margins of the plot for a while, but you get the feeling that whatever he has to tell Baker could be significant. Turns out, he’s got some [squints] hot new fishing equipment to sell.
Reid works for a company that’s created a fish finder, and he’s offering it to Baker for free so he may catch Justice. (At this point—yes, it’s hard to imagine this movie getting a wide release.) Except, while pitching this fish finder, Reid inadvertently tells Baker that he shouldn’t kill Frank on his boat—how the hell could he have known about that?
Well, Reid has to eventually disclose that he is “the rules,” and it’s his job to make sure that Baker doesn’t commit murder. He is the rules? What the hell is going on here?
5. Turns Out, Plymouth Island Is Actually The Sims on Cocaine
[Deep breath, my sanity echoing away into the abyss.] The whole Plymouth Island–is-a-Massachusetts-ass-name-for-a-Caribbean-island issue? Yeah, there’s a reason the island doesn’t make sense: None of this is real. Plymouth Island is a location inside a computer game, and everyone on the island—including, of course, Baker Dill—is a character created by that kid Patrick. Reid is, in a literal sense, a physical representation of the game’s rules contending with some changes.
Patrick created this fishing-centric video game, but he has recently messed with the code and thrown in a murder scenario because he’s thinking about killing his IRL stepdad, who is harming his IRL mother. The seemingly telepathic communication Baker holds with Patrick is, in fact, what happens when Patrick is messing around with the game’s code, and thus, Baker himself. Patrick, by the way, modeled Baker after his IRL dad, who died serving in Iraq. Baker has to contend with the nature of his digital reality, his own free will, nonplaying characters like Duke trying to prevent this murder scenario from happening, and the “rules” in the form of Succession’s Jeremy Strong.
Can Baker choose between fishing for tuna or killing a shitty person? Is there a right or wrong decision? What happens if he does kill Frank? More importantly: Why did multiple Oscar winners sign up for this movie? Did they do it because they wanted a paid vacation in Mauritius, where Serenity was filmed? How is this movie getting a wide release? What type of drugs were in Steven Knight’s system when he wrote this script?
All I can say is that the final 15 minutes of this movie is genuinely some of the wildest shit I’ve ever seen. Serenity intercuts between Baker and Karen taking a drunk and injured Frank on the fishing boat just as Justice the tuna shows up while Patrick, in real life, thinks about finally killing his stepdad with a knife he’s got in his room. Baker catches Justice with his fishing rod and passes it over to Frank, who is dragged off the boat and drowns in the ocean because of Justice’s immense tuna-strength. Patrick gets up from his computer and, off-screen, kills his abusive stepdad. Justice … is served.
That’s it. That is the very real plot of Serenity. Get a Brink’s truck filled with Razzies to Steven Knight’s driveway posthaste; we’ve got a runaway winner on our hands. This is 2019’s Book of Henry; The Snowman for the tropics; The Sims by way of McConaughey’s Lincoln commercials and bare ass. Welcome to the first day of the rest of your life. Time to catch some tuna.
