Apart

Walking into this film, I thought I was going to see an intriguing sci-fi drama about two people who couldn’t be apart for medical reasons beyond their control. Instead what I saw was a sappy and poorly told story about a boy and a girl who didn’t understand each other or their disease.

A rare psychological disorder links Noah to Emily. The two meet when they are quite young, but when they are together bad things always happen. Somehow Noah is caught on the wrong side of a tragic event, and when he wakes from a coma he must find Emily so that together they can understand what has happened.

Apart was worth a shot. With the right script and cast this story would’ve been great. Unfortunately, neither was available in this film, and the editing only made it worse. Told in timelines and flashbacks, it was frustrating trying to figure out where we were in both time and place.

Each time I noted a flaw, I thought something might correct it. However, each scene was more and more dull. The actors played their characters in one note, and we never got to see them in depth. The supporting cast was either completely unnecessary, like Emily’s doctor (Joey Lauren Adams) who added nothing to the story, or as bland as the leads in which they supported.

My biggest criticism relates to the disease that is supposed to hold this entire story together. The audience is told at the very beginning that there is this rare disorder that causes people to link together and that the only cure is to separate them. This is really the last time this disorder is mentioned or explained. I couldn’t believe that the story wouldn’t tell us more but there we were, out of the loop on the underlying purpose of the film.

To be blunt, Apart fell short. The poor acting, editing and story took away whatever chance this film had at being something special. Apart will only leave you frustrated and let down, and in terms of a film, neither makes this film worthy of a recommendation.