My head is buzzing. Like, actually vibrating. I just finished Bloodshot on Netflix and my brain feels like it's been stuffed full of static and then set on fire. It's 1:17 AM and I'm just staring at the black screen on my TV, my cat, Mochi, is giving me the side-eye like I've personally offended her by not going to bed.
Okay. So. That movie.
It starts and this guy, Ray, he's a soldier, all stoic and heroic, and then BAM, he's dead. And I'm like, well, that was a fast movie. But no. They bring him back. With magic blood. Or nanites. Whatever. Tiny robots in his blood that can heal anything. And he's super strong now. And his wife is dead. Or is she? The first half of the movie is just this revenge-fueled rampage and I was kinda into it, leaning forward on my couch, the blanket half-fallen off. He's just tearing through people to get to the guy who killed his wife. Simple. Effective. I even paused it to go get a glass of water, my heart was thumping a little.
But then the twist hits. And it's not just a twist, it's like the entire floor of reality just drops out from under you. The revenge, the wife, the bad guy... it's all a simulation. A lie they feed him over and over to "reboot" him and use him as a weapon. And the moment that really stuck with me, the one I can't shake, is when he's in the bathroom, looking in the mirror. He sees his dead wife's reflection behind him, but for a split second, the image glitches. Her face flickers, replaced by the face of the scientist who's been manipulating him. It's not a big, flashy effect. It's subtle. A crack in the porcelain. And in that moment, you see it in his eyes. The shift from grief to pure, unadulterated confusion, then horror. It's the moment his entire world breaks. That shot. That one, tiny little glitch. That's the whole movie right there.
Honestly, it messed me up a little. It reminded me of this one time I woke up in a hotel room in a city I wasn't supposed to be in – long story, work thing got changed – and for a solid ten seconds, I had no idea what year it was, let alone what city. I just stared at the generic hotel art and felt this total disconnect from my own life. Like I was a character in someone else's story. It's a terrifying feeling, and that movie just injects that feeling directly into your veins for 90 minutes.
The action is… a lot. There's a scene where he's fighting another enhanced dude in a tunnel full of shipping containers, and they're just throwing each other through walls, and the nanites are crawling all over them, fixing broken bones and gashes in real-time. I was literally on the edge of my cushion, wincing. It's gross and cool at the same time. But now that I'm thinking about it… was it actually that cool? Or is it just another version of the same "superhero punch-up" we've seen a million times? The slow-mo, the crunchy sound effects, the inevitable "I have to rip out his power source" finale. I thought I loved it in the moment, but typing this out now… was it kind of dumb? I don't know. I'm conflicted.
And Vin Diesel is just… Vin Diesel. You know? He's this gravelly-voiced block of concrete who feels two emotions: Determined and More Determined. (Don't get me wrong, I love the guy, he's a national treasure, but his emotional range is… focused.) It works, though, for a character who's basically a blank slate being rewritten over and over.
The whole at-home experience on Netflix added to it, I think. The ability to pause. I actually stopped it right after the big reveal to just process. I got up, paced around my living room for a minute, Mochi watching my every move. You can't do that in a theater. You're just strapped in for the ride. Here, in my dimly lit living room with the faint hum of the refrigerator, it felt more personal. More disorienting. I could rewind that mirror scene and watch it again. And I did. Three times. It just loses something on a big screen with a crowd of people crunching popcorn. This felt like a secret I was discovering alone at 1 AM.
The ending is a loop. He escapes, but he knows they can just reset him again. He's free, but he's not. It's this frustrating, perfect, cyclical nightmare. It doesn't wrap up in a neat little bow. It just… stops. Leaving you with that same unsettled feeling. My brain is still trying to piece it together, like Ray trying to remember his real life. Was any of it real? Does it even matter?
Okay. I'm done. My thoughts are going in circles. Time to try and shut my brain off.
7/10. solid
—Alex