Glazer, who co-wrote the script with Lee, plays Lucy, a married, upwardly mobile professional who\u2019s been trying to get pregnant with her husband Adrian (Justin Theroux) for over two years. Lucy agrees to see Adrian\u2019s former teacher Dr. Hindle (Pierce Brosnan), a brilliant fertility doctor, and the couple are thrilled when their IVF treatment produces triplets. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Shortly after she becomes pregnant, Lucy starts experiencing paranoia and hallucinations. She overhears conversations between Adrian and Dr. Hindle that sound like they\u2019re planning something behind her back. She has visions involving blood and drowning. Something is definitely wrong, something more serious than \u201cmommy brain,\u201d but every time Lucy discovers information that proves her fears, someone else invariably gaslights her. No spoilers, but anyone with an ounce of knowledge about recent news stories involving fertility doctors or, for that matter, Lifetime movies, can figure out where this is going.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The idea behind False Positive <\/em>\u2013 <\/em>that women don\u2019t get to control their own bodies or have their decisions respected in even their most vulnerable state \u2013 is a good one. However, it lacks personality. Lucy feels like a blank canvas; we know almost nothing about her, and she doesn\u2019t seem to have any friends. She\u2019s almost always surrounded by men at home, during her fertility treatments and at her marketing job, but apart from the obvious visual message that sends, we don\u2019t know how Lucy feels about any of it, particularly before she gets pregnant. This is particularly odd given that Glazer is a dynamic performer and writer, easily capable of giving her character an inner life that gets the audience to care about her.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The film is also defined by a muted production design and cinematography from Midsommar\u2019s <\/em>Pawel Pogorzelski that sometimes manages to transcend the film\u2019s cold, clinical remove, but more often than not further accentuates it. While that approach makes sense given the story it\u2019s telling, because the rest of False Positive<\/em> already feels flat, this only serves to dull things down even more. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Perhaps the issue is that False Positive<\/em> feels like it should be a much angrier film than it is. It\u2019s subdued when it should be screaming, internalized when it should be throwing things around and pointing at its central message with a middle finger raised high. Peele certainly got that; so did Emerald Fennell when she tackled another harrowing part of the female experience in Promising Young Woman<\/em>. Glazer has proven throughout her career that she\u2019s capable of doing it with aplomb. It\u2019s disappointing and unfortunate, then, that her foray into genre filmmaking is a whimper instead of a bang. ![\"\"](\"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/06\/false-positive-1024x641.png\")
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