Indulging In Sentimentality And Conventionality Derails The Discovery

Death is an inevitability but just because it's guaranteed to come does not make its imminent arrival more enticing, similar to how knowing Nickelback will eventually have another album unleashed on the unwitting masses does not make that actual event more pleasing to experience. We always fear death, no matter what circumstances bring about its arrival, but in The Discovery, the prospect of death has become something people eagerly greet with open arms, to the point that there's been a swarm of suicides over the course of two years. What on Earth kind of event could account for this morbid turn of events?

Well, it turns out a human being has discovered definitive proof that there is indeed an afterlife, leading massive amounts of human beings to kill themselves in order to reach the afterlife. The person behind this life-altering discovery is Thomas Harbor (Robert Redford), whose son, Will Harbor (Jason Segel), is the main character of this story. Two years after Thomas's big discovery, Will is incredibly uneasy with the whole rampant suicide deal and learns that is father has turned this huge compound into a place where people who have attempted to commit suicide can be rehabilitated. It's also a place where Thomas is working on a new invention, one which can possibly offer living people a chance to gaze into the afterlife itself.

Also along for the ride is Isla (Rooney Mara, heavily channeling Aubrey Plaza of all people in her performance), a quirky lady Will had a chance encounter with on the boat to his father's place who attempts to commit suicide and is only thwarted from doing so by Will's intervention. The two form a romantic relationship over the course of the story which is abruptly introduced (their first kiss had me seriously confused for a moment, thinking it was some kind of ruse or what not) and then ends up becoming a focal point of the story despite not being fleshed out enough for it to fully support a movie.

Their relationship is one of the schmaltzy parts of The Discovery that brings the whole movie down considerably, which is a shame since, whenever it's just indulging in the darker qualities of its premise in the first half of the story, it can be quite the entertaining movie. Some funny morbid humor gets wrung out of the rampant cases of suicide, such as a humorously subtle recurring gag wherein all the sidewalks or roads the characters are on are always vacant because there's been a sharp decrease in the population. Similarly, an extended visit to a hospital to kidnap a dead body has some subdued funny bits to it, such as Jesse Plemons character attempting to distract a doctor.

Heck, the best acting of the entire movie comes in its darkest moment, when Thomas Harbor dresses down a member of the compound who had told to a friend of hers a mildly negative thing about Harbor's lack of progress on an invention. His response to this action is to publically shame her while Redford keeps this eerily calm salesman-like voice the entire time he's breaking this poor woman's spirit. It's a great scene actually that takes great advantage of Robert Redford's legendary skills as an actor, easily the highlight of the entire movie. I thought this was going to be a set-up for Thomas Harbor being a full-fledged baddie for the rest of the movie...but the scene doesn't have too much of an impact on the relationship Thomas has with the other members of the compound or Will.

Instead, the film goes in a more cloyingly sentimental route with the fractured father/son relationship that the film not only hasn't earned the right to do but doesn't fit in at all with the past behavior displayed by both characters. It's a weird character detour that feels all the more like a waste because of just how good Redford was in indulging in the more menacing side of Thomas Harbor. The entire third act of the overall mostly serviceable but heavily uneven The Discovery gets bogged down in more conventional treacly storytelling that brings down a movie that is at its best when it's fully grappling with the darkness of its starting concept of discovering that there is an afterlife.