After a romantic evening at their secluded lake house, a woman wakes up handcuffed to her dead husband. Trapped and isolated in the dead of winter, she must fight off hired killers to escape her la...
I realize I haven’t been kind to Megan Fox since, well…..I got no damn clue, ok? That’s how long it’s been and Rogue was only a few months ago. Whether it be a lack of interest, sounding robotic or the script she was working with regardless of the movie, I found it extremely difficult to rally behind her as a credible actress with the exception of Jennifer’s Body. So when I went to check on her recent releases and saw “Till Death” attached to her name….
….there was no helping myself. I had to emulate it to see if there was any value to this.
Safe to say, ok I can’t sugarcoat my way around it. It’s a lesser man’s version of Gerald’s Game in every sense of the word but….knock me down and call me Fanny, I don’t think this is actually that bad. Predictable, yes but far from juvenile.
The contained thriller seems to be a lost art in cinema. Like I mentioned in my Annabelle Comes Home review, normally, having an event occur on one day in one or two secluded locations is going to force the director and writers to get creative while jotting this down. It’s the execution that trip up a lot of people normally because they either forget to take into account the severity of the situation the characters are involved in or they tend to make it repetitive and said characters aren’t that interesting to begin with. Newcomer Scott Dale let’s it be known that he’s aware of the shortcomings this genre has been plagued with and his serviceable direction speaks to that of a man trying his damndest to stuff just enough into so little; most of which is reflected in the simplistic but tight writing and it’s commentary.
From inability to accept blame for your own wrongdoings, lingering trauma and fighting to reclaim your life in both ways, the literal dragging of her spouses corpse was the most damning part of it all. Most of it is because of how uncannily obvious the parallel becomes in regards to dragging along the dead weight of your failures and Megan Fox’s actual resume as an actress. Just look back at how many blunders she’s been in over the years and you’ll be able to pick apart the metaphor right away.
Speaking of which…..holy shit, Megan Fox was pretty damn solid. Dare I say, I’m…..putting her on my best actors of the year list? No, I am not exaggerating: she really is that great here; she sells the believability of years of pent-up anguish and hatred for their significant other, adapts well to the corresponding scene when the movie calls for it and separated herself from anything else she has done previously…..after the first half an hour.
Rest of the acting was solid too.
Both the consistent tone and distinct bleak style adds both urgency and mystique to the pacing, seeing how swiftly the story actually moves along with the sufficient if not silly drama it upholds. There’s enough suspense to hold your attention for the runtime, dialogue was surprisingly amusing and production design, again, is benefited from a director who’s aware of his surroundings and knows where and what to elevate a scenario far beyond what appears to be its own boundaries.
Now, keep in mind: the characters were still rather faulty. I appreciated how much I cared for the protagonist as well as how intertwined she was with everyone else’s stories but it was like the bare minimum to get this story going anywhere. A few head-scratching decisions leave you questioning the logic and longevity of its moments and even if that’s not the case for some people, if you’ve seen enough of these films, you know how it’s going to end. None of this was able to mask the ending that I knew was going to come up eventually either.
But my lord, they actually pulled it off. Megan Fox pulled out another solid performance in a movie that DIDN’T SUCK! She outFOXed me and her doubters…..hopefully. Fingers crossed for next time.
