Movie review
April 6, 2016 · 101 min · R
Woke Score
Lower is better
Review
Demolition follows a numb investment banker who loses his wife in a car crash and begins literally and figuratively demolishing his life while forming an unlikely bond with a single mother and her teenage son. The story centers on personal grief, emotional repression, and quiet reinvention through everyday destruction and connection. A visible supporting subplot shows the son in effeminate clothing questioning his sexuality in direct scenes, including graphic personal admissions, but this remains secondary to the adult protagonist’s arc and carries no activist framing or institutional messaging.
Breakdown
These are the editorial factors and ratings behind our score for Demolition.
Woke representation / casting
Conventional white cast perfectly matched 2016 suburban New York setting and character logic with zero forced diversity, race/gender swaps, or quota signaling in leads or marketing.
Woke political dialogue
Zero activist, political, or ideological lines; all conversations stay personal about grief, marriage, and daily objects.
Identity-driven story themes
Core engine is one man’s private grief and self-demolition journey; visible LGBTQ subplot with effeminate presentation, direct “am I gay?” questioning, and graphic admissions receives elevated weighting but stays supporting and non-dominant.
Western institutional / cultural critique
No modern activist reframing of capitalism, patriarchy, masculinity, or institutions; banker dissatisfaction and emotional shutdown read as individual, not systemic.
Woke character or canon changes
Not relevant
Anti-woke backlash and complaints
Complete absence of claims the film pushes woke, identity-political, or left-wing content; reception ignored such angles.
Creator track record context
Vallée’s prior AIDS-crisis film provides minor contextual note but shows no alignment with activist language or themes in this 2016 project.
Production
