I just watched the movie (most of it). I have a question for the people defending this movie, have any of you watched it?
I don't understand what this movie is about. It is certainly not child porn, but it does gratuitously sexualize the girls to the point where it is gross and confusing. I genuinely don't understand the point of including most of the scenes; they could have told a much better story without most, if not all of it.
I am just going to lay it out without concern for spoilers. Throughout the movie the main group of girls are dressed like adults who are aware of their sexuality (tight pants, short shorts, low cut shirts, etc), but nothing too terrible or out of the norm for the USA (not approving or disapproving of it, just stating it). They have dance rehearsal segments that are spliced in-between story segments that are sexualized. The camera focuses on their crotches and butts while they preform sexualized dance moves. To me, there is zero point to these segments except to sexualize the girls. There is a scene where Amy has her pants pulled down and you can see her butt (in underwear). Again, this scene serves no point. Later in the movie, after Amy gets in trouble for acting out, stealing a phone, posting a picture of her genitals to social media (you don't actually see anything), and stabbing a class mate with a pen, her mother subjects her to a cultural ritual in order to cleanse her spirit (or something like that). She is basically standing in a room in her underwear with her mother and grandmother (or aunt?) and they are spraying her with water. At first Amy is crying and shaking but for some reason she starts twerking as her mother looks on in disbelief. I shared the same expression as the camera zoomed around and focused on her butt. It was bizarre and creepy, and again the point was lost to me. I stopped watching the movie during the dance contest finals. This takes place after the girl group kicks Amy out for causing trouble with all the crazy shit she did. They bring back one of the girls they previously kicked out to return as the fourth dancer in their group. Since Amy is a psychopath and refuses to accept her fate, she decides to ambush the new girl and push her into a river. She then stares in shock (?) as the girl struggles to swim (it looks like she is going to drown), but then Amy quickly moves on to the dance contest once she sees the other girl reach a small buoy. Then the dance finals start and it is a hyper sexualized dance routine with the camera focused on all of their parts. It is really gratuitous and gross; it was shot like a music video that was overtly using sex as a selling point. I turned it off at this with about 15 min left. I don't know what movie the critics saw, but to me this movie is about a group of psychopathic 11 year old girls. Do 11 year old girls really act like this? The sexualization of the girls is front and center and gratuitous to the point that I really do think it undermines any "point" the creators tried to conveyed. There was only one really enjoyable part of the movie. There is a scene where the girls meet a group of older guys (teenagers). One of the guys askes how old they are because they look young and one of the girls says 14, but Amy says 11. The guys walk away making jokes about their age and how they are dressed, but the girl who said 14 keeps yelling back to them that she knows her multiplication tables as if it was evidence that she is older. It was actually a cute and funny scene.
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