Demolition (2016) can't fix its own foundation
Photo Credit: Demolition / Fox Searchlight Pictures Workaholic Davis Mitchell (Jake Gyllenhaal) struggles to express his grief after his wife dies from a tremendous car accident. Unlike his in-laws, or his own parents, even co-workers, Mitchell just can't connect with his loss. Suppressing his pain seems to be the immediate answer. He throws himself into work and then is caught up in a friendship with a customer service agent Karen (Naomi Watts) he started writing letters to when the vending machine at the hospital didn't work. In 2014 director Jean-Marc Vallée's exquisitely adapted author Cheryl Strayed's Wild to explore the weight of her mother's death as she hiked the Pacific Crest Trail. Just two years later with a similar premise, Demolition is simply a weaker version of its predecessor. Vallée's second take on bereavement focuses on a protagonist realizing the cage he felt trapped by in his marriage - almost like he wouldn't realize ho...