I am not sure where to begin when it comes to the task of writing about the 2019 Cats movie. I had no words during the movie, none after, and am struggling to find any now as I try to write. I can’t remember the last time I saw a movie as bad as this–perhaps I have never seen a movie that was bad in quite the same way. I was never particularly fond of the Cats musical, but I have seen that production more than once and I believe that whatever it was I saw in the movie theatre that night, it was not what Andrew Lloyd Webber had envisioned when he originally wrote the play in 1981. I don’t think it was anything that anyone envisioned because I’m still not convinced that it came from another person.

The Cats movie premiered on December 20, 2019 in the United States. Based on my own experience and what I’ve gathered from peers, it wasn’t advertised well beforehand. I can’t recall seeing a single commercial or ad across any platform, and I only knew about it from the few people who sought out the trailer and then went to Twitter to warn everyone that it was awful. My friend and I, who have both seen the musical, decided to go, partly as a joke and partly because we were genuinely interested in how the movie would compare to the musical production. It can definitely be fun to watch bad movies–but that only applies to movies that are so bad that they’re funny. Cats was not funny. I did not have any fun.

Going into the movie, I thought I knew what I was getting into because of the trailer clips I had seen on the internet. I knew each character was going to be a weird humanoid cat, which isn’t that far off from the original. For those who have not seen the musical, the original costumes were patterned bodysuits with feathers and fluff for fur. Actors wore super colorful face paint, some heavy black eye-liner, and a spot on the nose, which completed the cat-like effect. It was like what people do on Halloween–maybe you thought that was weird, too, but it was acceptable for what the show was. In the movie, the characters have the same skin-tight silhouette effect that a body-suit creates, but the bodies were designed with CGI, so they are disturbingly realistic. It is essentially what a person would look like if they were naked and covered in a thin layer of fur. That’s a lot to take in, but it doesn’t stop there, because they also changed the face makeup. This unsavory fur-suit covers everything all the way to the back head, and, to my dismay, they did not opt for the classic face-paint look. There is still fur, whiskers, and ears on the face, but they also have human noses, eyebrows, and lips. Who thought that this was a good idea? I did not need to see what Taylor Swift and James Cordan’s facial features would look like if they had fur. It is haunting. I truly want to forget about it forever.

“This unsavory fur-suit covers everything all the way to the back head, and, to my dismay, they did not opt for the classic face-paint look. There is still fur, whiskers, and ears on the face, but they also have human noses, eyebrows, and lips. Who thought this was a good idea?”

If you can get past the nauseating appearance of each cat (if they can actually be referred to as cats), you will find yourself, yet again, disappointed because the music does not make up for anything. I don’t know if they forgot to hire an orchestra to perform the instrumental part which plays under the singing, but whatever decision they made about how to record it was a bad one. It sounded like the weird, cheap, empty beat you hear on a “life hack” video. Basically, I’m wondering if they just went on Royalty Free Music and called it a day. Or maybe they tried to copy a track from there. I’m not really sure. Maybe most of the budget was spent on the CGI and they forgot that they also had to record the soundtrack. The singing was okay–Jennifer Hudson sounded great, but it’s really hard to appreciate her singing when they made her look so terrifying. This problem occurred with most of the songs, as well as the weirdness of the scenes themselves. That overpowered most of the music.

For example, Rebel Wilson, who played the cat called Jennyanydots, has her own musical number when her character is introduced. Time could not have passed slower than during this song. She sings, “The Old Gumbie Cat” in her owner’s kitchen. A good ways into the song she opens a cabinet to reveal mice, who accompany her part. Surely the mice are also not real people’s faces edited onto CGI bodies, right? Wrong. They are the exact same, except all the mice are child actors, which, though I can’t really put into words why, makes it much worse. At this point, I am phasing in and out of consciousness. How long have I been here? Is this real? I was not comforted by the fact that my friend and I were the only people in the theatre that night. Rebel Wilson gets on all fours and crawls under a table. She’s singing about bugs now–cockroaches. My friend and I turned to each other–our faces face said it all. The cockroaches will just look like cockroaches, right? No. Human faces on cockroaches. I turn back to the screen. There are lines of little cockroach people dancing on the table with Rebel Wilson. Then, she starts eating the cockroach people. What? I’m not sure. I feel like I am dying.

“They are the exact same, except all the mice are child actors, which, though I can’t really put into words why, makes it much worse. At this point, I am phasing in and out of consciousness. How long have I been here? Is this real?”

The rest of the movie is filled with similar fever-dream sequences that make it quite difficult to flesh out a plot of any kind. The musical itself didn’t have a clear plot either, but whatever they did with this is undoubtedly worse. In the final scene, Judi Dench’s character Old Deutoronomy speaks directly to the camera. I should mention that the two other main characters, Victoria and Munkustrap are perched below her, nuzzling her. This was something that happened throughout the movie. I get it–cats will do that cute thing where they rub their heads against each other when they feel happy, or whatever. I wanted to gouge my eyes out seeing these people do it, though. Anyway, Old Deuteronomy starts with this speech to the audience about what a cat is, or wants–to be honest I’m not really sure what it was about, but she kept saying “A cat is…” over and over. All I know is: it went on for far too long and it made me incredibly uncomfortable to watch this freakish cat-human thing acknowledge me in the audience. We sat through that, and then the credits rolled.

What’s so striking about this experience is that, without noticing, I had started crying at some point during the final scene. My friend was crying, too. I tried to recall–was there a sad scene at any point? Not really, but then again, there was never a moment where I knew what emotion I was supposed to feel. Still, why was I crying? Over the past few weeks, I’ve watched many videos of people filming themselves and friends in the theatre, watching this movie. They’re all crying, too. It’s uncanny. In every single video the viewers are crying. I think I understand now. Cats made me feel like I was dying. It evoked the primal urge in me to be absolutely terrified of my own impending doom. I never want to watch a movie like this ever again.