'The Lovely Bones' is an absolute red flag for me.

The Lovely Bones (2009), directed by the all-powerful Peter Jackson (The Lord of the Rings trilogy, The Hobbit trilogy, King Kong) begins with the concept of "less is more," and in the first six scenes - in just five minutes - exemplarily depicts the protagonist family, with a special attention on the little Susie (the great Saoirse Ronan).

Suddenly, in the seventh scene, Susie's own voiceover reveals that she has been murdered and begins the 'game' of identifying the perpetrator. That game is abruptly finished shortly after in the excellent crime scene, where the New Zealand director shines with magnificent planning, wisely playing with camera height and perfectly using the wide-angle; with intelligent parallel editing of the trivial and warm family dinner, creating a gloomy contrast because the viewer knows how it all ends; and with superb actor direction, highlighting an outstanding Stanley Tucci.

Shortly later, in a terrible four-minute scene involving a hundred thousand visual effects, the picture begins to reveal its flaws: Susie has landed up in a type of purgatory filled with colors and computer-generated scenery. Everything that happens in that location is monotonous, shallow, and, worst of all, unpleasant.

From here, the movie strikes an endless snag (lasting more than 30 minutes) in which, instead of narrative gaps, we see all of the Great Lakes one after the other. To top it off, Susan Sarandon's weak and clichéd character leaps into action, filling many minutes of footage with one of the saddest scenes I've seen in a long time. I'm curious who Susan owes a favor to for accepting this role.

After a dreadful second act, Stanley Tucci's reintroduction appears to revitalize the plot, but neither Mark Wahlberg's bland face nor the putative police intrigue (quite badly narrated by Jackson) manage to do so. Only the disturbing scene in which Susie's sister looks for evidence of the killer is worthwhile. Jackson makes excellent use of the environment, time, and events in that scene. Tucci is once again gigantic, and he expresses more with a look than Wahlberg does throughout the film.

The (alleged) final climactic sequence borders on the ludicrous, equating romanticism with stupidity. To make matters worse, the film attempts to give relevance to two secondary characters who are completely vague and serve only as functional patches.

In conclusion, The Lovely Bones is an erratic and failed picture, with a very engaging first act and a significant emptiness later. All of the special effects in the second act are unnecessary and impede the development of a dense and badly structured storyline. Despite this, Peter Jackson's work behind the camera is impressive, with some standout moments, particularly in the two aforementioned passages.

With all this, it concludes why for me this movie is a full-blown red flag. If you like this movie, I can only understand it for two reasons: either you are an unrepentant fan of Peter Jackson and whatever he does, you will like it (which I never think is a good thing), or you have, in my opinion, poor cinematic taste. So, red flag and everyone is happy!