I'd written it off entirely. The trailer had done it no favours, the premise sounded like a thing I'd seen a dozen times before, and I'd quietly filed it under "no". Then someone whose taste I trust told me I was wrong, in the specific and slightly smug way that means they've already won the argument, and I went along more to prove a point than out of any real curiosity.
They were right, of course. The thing I'd dismissed as the whole film turned out to be the setup for something quieter and stranger underneath, the sort of film that's actually about one small human thing and uses the loud premise as cover. I spent the first twenty minutes feeling vindicated in my low expectations and the rest of it slowly, grudgingly, completely won over.
What stayed with me wasn't the film so much as the reminder. I'm quick to decide I won't like things, and I dress it up as taste when really it's just laziness wearing taste's coat. The trailer is a terrible oracle. The premise tells you almost nothing. And the people who insist you're wrong about something are, often enough, worth the cost of being wrong in front of. I'll be slightly slower to file things under "no" for a while. Until I forget, which, going on past form, will be roughly a fortnight.