Earthquake Bird Review: Netflix's Alicia Vikander Whodunnit Gets the Little Things Right

Much of Earthquake Bird feels familiar. That isn't a knock. The movie is set in 1989 and it has a palpable sense of "Oh, yes, this is what movies for grown ups felt like 30 years ago." The attitudes and ambience will bring some pleasant nostalgia to people with a little film history under their belts. But it also means the ending in what's supposed to be a police whodunnit comes off a little "that's it?" Still, the journey to anticlimax still offers enough to recommend the film.

Alicia Vikander is a Swedish ex-pat living in Japan. She works as a translator, and up top there's a good in-joke; she's translating the film Black Rain, which starred Michael Douglas as a Western cop chasing down the Yakuza. That movie was directed by Ridley Scott, who is a producer on this one. Scott's sleek vibe is nowhere to be found in Wash Westmoreland's adaptation of Susana Jones' novel, but some of that nighttime, shimmering sheen can be found from time to time. It's a little hard to avoid.

Westmoreland, who is English, attended school in Japan in the late 1980s, so it's fair to trust his eye for what a Westerner might observe. Vikander's Lucy Fly is a reserved, perhaps even timid person who is clearly hiding something when we first get into her story. It is told in flashback, to police. Her American friend Lily (Riley Keough) has been missing, and a washed-up body may be hers. Lucy is a suspect.

Lucy befriended Lily, who seems at first like a fun-loving airhead (but who may have more going on than appears!), not long after she met Teiji (Naoki Kobayashi), an amateur photographer who works at a noodle shop and is a stone cold hunk. Teiji woos Lucy by asking her to model for him, then by basically negging her when she presents herself to more than just his camera. In time, though, they do hook up, and if I may be bold I'll say that the short lovemaking scene is effective and erotic. In an era saturated with crude depictions of intimacy all over our computers, Westmoreland (whose last picture, the quite good Collette, which he directed with his late husband) is proudly bringing sexy back.

It looks like a match for Lucy and Teiji, but things get weird when Lily comes around. Lucy doesn't notice at first, and part of this is because she's still dealing with the demons in her head. Bad luck seems to follow Lucy wherever she goes. (A nice old lady bringing her tea cakes falls to her death for some reason!) What isn't she telling us? Is there something supernatural happening here? The movie doesn't tip its hand.

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The inevitable love triangle comes to its sharp point, but before it does Earthquake Bird (which takes its name from the "all clear" sound of chirps one supposedly hears after tectonic rumblings in Japan) offers Riley Keough an opportunity to strut her stuff. Keough is a great performer (go see American Honey) and deserves the respect she's earned on her own. That said, there are times when it is difficult to forget that she is, in fact, Elvis Presley's granddaughter. Westmoreland allows her some space to lean into it, especially in one clubbing sequence in which she (with teased-out late-'80s hair) cuts a rug to a version of Yoko Ono's "Walking on Thin Ice." It rules. She rules. Everything about all this rules.

Everything, that is, until the ending, which kinda whiffs it. But plot is only one thing. Movies, for me, at least, can sometimes succeed just on fantasy, on projecting yourself into a particular time and place. There's a scene in Earthquake Bird where the two women talk about how isolated they are from everything they know. "A letter took eight days to get here!" Keough says, "and a phone call to a friend cost $100!" Not only do those details enrich a story like this, it galvanizes the importance of a first real love, the dangers of adulthood. These difficult to articulate themes are what underpin what works about this movie, even if the details of the mystery are a little by-the-numbers.

TV Guide Rating: 3.5/5

Earthquake Bird premieres Friday, Nov. 15 on Netflix.