Chaos Walking is the name of a popular young adult fiction series written by Patrick Ness, an author whose work was previously adapted to the big screen in the 2016 film A Monster Calls. Based primarily on the first novel in the trilogy, “The Knife of Never Letting Go”, the movie Chaos Walking tells the story of Todd Hewitt, an adolescent boy living in Prentisstown, a settlement on an alien planet that has been colonized by humans. Todd, played by Spider-Man actor Tom Holland, has never seen a woman as, according to what he’s been told by the town’s Mayor, the women were all killed by the planet’s indigenous alien species, the Spackle, when Todd was very young.

The men of Prentisstown all have a sort of aura around their heads called The Noise which echoes their unconscious thoughts, speaking aloud what they’re really thinking. One day a spaceship crash lands nearby and Todd sees a figure run off into the woods. The odd thing about this figure is the person running has no Noise around them. When Todd informs the Mayor, the Mayor puts the town on high alert. A person appearing with no Noise can only mean one thing, the figure Todd saw run into the woods was a woman…

Chaos Walking is a film that is at once something you’ve already seen before, while also being unique. The young adult (YA) fiction genre is one that came to prominence with the Hunger Games trilogy, and this film likely would not exist had the Hunger Games movies not been such a massive hit. While this is a different story, the style and feel of those movies permeate this one to a degree that you can tell the studio is making an effort to aim it at the same audience.

While this movie treads familiar ground it manages to do so in a way that is its own. The Noise that encircles most of the film’s characters is something unique in my viewing experience, a movie in which the spoken dialogue is continuously being supplemented by the characters’ subconscious chatter. This can, at times, candidly be annoying but as the film progressed I also found it to be intriguing. The movie acculturates the audience to a continuous string of commentary surrounding almost every line of dialogue to the point that it almost becomes jarring when lines are delivered without the accompanying overlay of subconscious verbiage. Like it or dislike it, this is a narrative technique that I’ve never encountered in any other movie and I appreciated its ability to bring something genuinely different to the table.

Beyond the Noise, the story is largely what you would expect from YA fiction. An adolescent boy, coming into manhood, confronts his blooming sexuality and seeks to find his role in the world. There is the gradual discovery that all might not be exactly as he’s been told growing up, and there are other perspectives he has never been made aware of. While the tale is familiar it is, nevertheless, engaging and well done. There is a sense of adrenaline as the lead characters flee their pursuers and encounter unknown and hostile environments along the way. This may not be deep storytelling, but it is fun light entertainment aimed at a young teen audience and in that it succeeds.

Overall, if you’re looking for a simple good time at the movie theater (or home theater as the case may be) and you can get past the Daisy Ridley’s atrocious hair style (really, whose idea was it to dye her hair blond but leave her eyebrows brown?) this movie delivers. It isn’t groundbreaking but it is engaging and does bring enough different to the table to keep things interesting. I found it quite enjoyable and it left me nostalgic to experience something like this in a movie theater.

3.5 out of 5 stars

In the not too distant future, Todd Hewitt (Tom Holland) discovers Viola (Daisy Ridley), a mysterious girl who crash lands on his planet, where all the women have disappeared and the men are afflicted by “the Noise” – a force that puts all their thoughts on display. In this dangerous landscape, Viola’s life is threatened – and as Todd vows to protect her, he will have to discover his own inner power and unlock the planet’s dark secrets.

Cast: Daisy Ridley, Tom Holland, Mads Mikkelsen, Demián Bichir, Cynthia Erivo, Nick Jonas, Kurt Sutter, and David Oyelowo
Directed by: Doug Liman
Adapted from: “The Knife of Never Letting Go” by Patrick Ness
Screenplay by: Charlie Kaufman, Jamie Linden, John Lee Hancock, Gary Spinelli, Lindsey Beer, Christopher Ford, Patrick Ness