Quartile rating: 7/10 · 1 rating
After being brutally murdered, 14-year-old Susie Salmon watches from heaven over her grief-stricken family -- and her killer. As she observes their daily lives, she must balance her thirst for revenge with her desire for her family to heal.
The Lovely Bones is visually striking, with Peter Jackson crafting a genuinely lush and imaginative afterlife through ambitious CGI and vibrant cinematography that stands out. The acting is competent — Saoirse Ronan is affecting as Susie, and Stanley Tucci delivers a memorably unsettling performance as the killer — though the ensemble is uneven. The plot, drawn from Alice Sebold's novel, has a compelling emotional premise but struggles with tonal inconsistency, veering between dark thriller and saccharine fantasy in ways that undermine both. The film lacks novelty beyond its visual approach; the grief narrative and serial-killer mystery elements are handled fairly conventionally. The ending is its weakest point — emotionally unearned and narratively unsatisfying, failing to resolve the thriller tension or the family's grief in a meaningful way, leaving the film feeling incomplete despite its ambitions.