A prime example of a good pitch gone bad. A vacationing couple wake with no memory of the prior night’s events, but with a video tape depicting one killing the other. Sounds intriguing yes? Nope. You’re watching Maggie Q and a Hemsworth clone running around pristine beaches being creeped out by the locals. To be fair, they hint early this is an isolated island culture adhering to its own traditions, but far too of the supposedly atmosphere relies on xenophobic visuals and far from effective ones. It feels like the type of movie made to write off a to a gorgeous on location Thai vacation. There are one or two gruesome and nightmarish hallucinatory sequences, but somehow no scares, despite menacing specters and some pretty bad travel flu. Exposition dumps are a‘plenty, trying to deliver a semi-ludicrous mythology behind island events, but let me spare you: incoherent and inconsistent. Trying to sell a film like this right now seems rather tragic, as I’m guessing most would risk bouts of supernatural dysentery for a tropical vacation getaway. It would certainly be more pleasurable than the film itself.
Death of Me (2020)