Regina Hall's inherent Regina Hall-ness - her magnetic fusion of poise and charisma - never shows in One Battle After Another. Instead of that usual charm, Hall is sober-minded and serious. As Deandra, a guerilla involved with a revolutionary sect called the French 75, she's waging war against oppression, whether that's militarized police, migrant detention camps, Christmas-worshipping white nationalists, or fascism at large.
If the experience of watching One Battle is so propulsive that you leave the theater feeling like you haven't taken a breath in hours, Vineland is far more digressive, switching genres by the page, with a plot that's more varied than the relatively simple man-tries-to-rescue-daughter story of One Battle. For one thing, Vineland has significant supernatural elements, including the existence of a class of person called a Thanatoid-souls caught between life and death.
