The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes

Rachel Zegler: The Country Songbird

I’m going to start off by saying I have only seen the first hunger games movie and after the enumerable Josh Hutcherson edits I have received, I will not be completing them anytime soon. So my review is purely on the merit of this film alone.

The first thing I really noticed about the film was Zegler’s attempt at a southern accent. It felt way over done and really doesn’t make sense as a piece of the narrative. It felt out of place. However, she did remind the audience that she can sing and has a beautiful voice at that. We caught a glimpse of her voice in West Side Story (2021) but she reestablish that she could.

There were some very good shots throughout the film, but some felt slightly misleading. There were a few shots that felt like they were signaling the ending of the film but weren’t.

Some character motivation was underutilized. There were some aspects of characters that would’ve made a lot more sense if they built it up a little more.

Overall, the first two acts were pretty good in the terms with writing, but when they got to the final act, they tried to just wrap things up and it got borderline sloppy.