Sunday 21 June 2020

Sweetheart (2020) - Movie Review



Female-led survival horror flicks have been steadily making the rounds over the last handful of years. The Shallows, Crawl, both entries in the Metres Down series; I guess the recent resurgence in ‘prestige’ horror cinema combined with the attempts to bring more female lead characters to the screen have resulted in this intersection. But up until this point, these films have thrived (or floundered) based on being short but sweet genre exercises, not rising too far above the benchmark for man vs. nature yarns. And then this film came along, yet another from the industrious (industrial?) Blumhouse production line, which… basically recontextualises this entire trend.

Not that you’d get that impression for the first half of this just-over-80-minute offering. While spiced up initially through a predominant lack of dialogue, letting the visuals and Kiersey Clemons’ physical acting carry the story, it presents itself as just another one of the pack. It manages to convey an impressive amount of information visually, from Clemons’ Jenn and her survival tactics on the island, to the left-over belongings of its previous castaways, to just how small the island itself ultimately is, but through that lack of sound (unless Jenn finally catches that big fish, which is certainly worth the celebration for one), it banks a lot on those visuals to carry it.

That and the big-ass sea monster. Yeah, the other major breaking point from the pack here is with the threat posed. Imagine if Predator, a Turian, and the Amphibian Man had a sprawling slashfic-primed orgy, and the egg that was left over hatched, and you’ve got a basic idea of what this… thing looks like. The use of shadows and nimble balancing of CGI and practical effects make the gradual reveal of the monster quite enthralling, if not always shit-scary, making for easily the best use of aquatic predator I’ve seen in any of these films yet.

Not that he ends up being the main pull, though, and this is where the second half comes in. Once a couple other people make their way to the island, both of whom are at least friends with Jenn, the film’s true purpose reveals itself. What was once an eerie silence turns into highly-pointed dialogue, essentially taking a base aspect of most horror films and super-charging it with modern social context: They don’t believe that there really is a monster.

While the execution is a little wobbly, as the level of gaslighting here legitimately reaches ‘Jenn gets blamed for the weather’, it manages to take a lingering vibe behind this more recent crop of survival horror flicks and bring it roaring into the forefront. And honestly, it makes for the best of the lot because it goes beyond quick yet effective thrills and taps into some genuinely timely shit, almost as if gripping the audience through sheer genre was just a happy little accident. It’s a parable on abuse and how much burden of proof gets (unfairly) placed on victims that isn’t just surprising, but astoundingly effective.

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