I have suffered.

Curiosity killed the cat and my curiosity stemming from abhorrent reviews lured me into an empty theater with an atrocity playing on screen. 

From the initial seconds of the film, terror consumed me as the embodiment of the “Spy Kids 2” quote “Do You Think God Stays in Heaven Because He too Lives in Fear of What He’s Created” appeared suddenly. There’s no bracing yourself; the “Cats” movie very abruptly pushes you into the madness. Only an hour into the movie I could not withstand the intense visual stimulation and had to walk out. 

Despite criticism of the music itself from many reviewers, I found the soundtrack to be a surprisingly redeeming aspect of the movie. Nevertheless, it isn’t difficult to have a mediocre element of a movie appear decent when paired with cat Rebel Wilson consuming cockroaches with human faces on them. 

The strangest part of the movie’s direction for me personally had to be the decision to keep the faces of the actors on the cat-human hybrids. Of course this was done to maintain the star power of relevant members of pop culture that may have enticed fans to watch the movie. Yet, the faces are truly horrifying. I thought the trailer was disturbing enough, but there is no feeling quite like sitting in the movie theater as a monstrous CGI cat-human looms over you. Not only that, but the CGI is so sloppily done that the faces of the actors move before the CGI does, causing this movie to be somehow even odder looking in real life than in the trailer. The decision to have both the dancing mice and cockroaches have the strange CGI faces tacked on was equally perplexing. 

Overall, this movie is impressive, not because it is good, but because it is a feat that someone convinced studio executives to honestly consider “Cats” to be an Oscar contender.