Andy Muschietti’s out there defending The Flash again, and I almost get it. Nobody wants to admit their $200 million superhero movie looks like it was rendered on a used PlayStation 3. Pride’s a hell of a drug, especially when you’ve spent years in front of green screens convincing everyone — including yourself — that the pixels will come together in post. But at some point, you’ve got to stop pretending the baby rescue scene was anything other than cinematic malpractice.
I love The Flash. It’s one of the best DC movies of the past decade. It’s got humor, pathos, and a surprisingly grounded emotional core. Ezra Miller gives a performance so good it’s a tragedy that it’s buried under all that digital sludge. Michael Keaton slides back into Batman like he never left. Michael Shannon chews the scenery like he’s starving for vengeance, and Sasha Calle brings a quiet grace to Supergirl that hints at what might have been if the studio hadn’t imploded. The heart of that movie beats strong — it’s the skin stretched over it that’s plastic.
Muschietti keeps saying the warped, rubbery look inside the Speed Force is intentional — how Barry perceives time. Sure, Andy. And those babies tumbling out of the hospital like dead-eyed Cabbage Patch Kids were part of the vision too? That’s not style. That’s triage. The kind of corner-cutting that happens when the production pipeline flatlines and the studio still wants to hit a release date.
That opening sequence should’ve cemented The Flash as a kinetic, operatic thrill ride — Barry darting through suspended chaos, defying gravity, saving lives with milliseconds to spare. Instead, it looked like Looney Tunes in 4K. You don’t feel awe; you feel secondhand embarrassment. And no amount of press-tour backpedaling is going to convince anyone that was the point.
Even the fan-service moments — Nicolas Cage’s Superman fighting a giant spider, for one — should’ve been the kind of deep-cut mythmaking comic nerds dream about. Instead, it plays like a rejected tech demo. The movie that should’ve celebrated cinematic history ended up looking like a test reel from 2010.
And yet, I still go back to The Flash. Not for the spectacle or the multiverse tricks, but for the performances. There’s a sincerity in that movie that feels rare now — messy, heartfelt, human. You can sense Muschietti’s horror roots bleeding through in the tension and emotion. He knows how to make chaos feel intimate; he just couldn’t render it convincingly in CG.
That’s why watching him double down now feels so misplaced. He’s blaming “bandwagons” and “angry people” for the film’s reputation, as if critics and audiences hallucinated the rubber. The problem wasn’t a mob. It was the mirror. You can love a movie to death and still admit where it faltered. Muschietti’s refusal to do that keeps the film stuck in the same loop of denial that killed it the first time.
Horror’s where he belongs — grounded lighting, thick atmosphere, shadows doing the storytelling for him. It worked because he made you believe in what you couldn’t quite see. Welcome to Derry will probably work for the same reason. That’s the Muschietti who connects with audiences — the one who doesn’t need a $200-million safety net to pull off something unforgettable.
So yeah, Andy, be proud of The Flash. It’s bold, emotional, and full of genuine heart. But stop defending the one part that everyone knows failed. The movie doesn’t need excuses — it needs honesty. Because buried beneath that blur is something worth celebrating, and you don’t have to distort time to see it.
Hollywood After Dark 