I’ve often thought horror/thriller movies have the best poster art. At one time people used to use originality in all poster art. Look at The Exorcist, Jaws, Back to the Future, or Platoon to name a few. Now it’s just a collection of the big names who are in the cast with the position and size comparable to how much they’re making and what their agents negotiated for them in the contracts.
How unoriginal it is to see a handful of actors in a movie look off in the distance? I blame Tom Hanks for this because once he became respectable as a serious actor, no one gave a fuck and just threw his face on the poster. I mean someone going blind into The Green Mile might think it’s a period piece about a bus driver from the look on Hank’s face and his costume which is actually a prison guard uniform.
But horrors and thrillers went all out, even if they were bad. I remember seeing the poster for Curtains and finding it both revolting and interesting as a withered old man’s beard turns into curtains. It’s actually a cheap Canadian slasher movie about actors. Even though it’s a hokey horror movies that feels more like a precursor to Goosebumps, but The Legend of Boggy Creek had a slouching bipedal creature that couldn’t be a human or animal walking through swampy water at sunset. You see this in the video rental shop not knowing what it is, you snatch it up anyway based on the poster art.
What Keeps You Alive has one of those looking-off-in-the-distance photo of Brittany Allen with blood over the left side of her face looking frightened as there are woods blurred in the background. You’re think this is a lesbian Deliverance because Allen has the hair of a 12-year-old Mormon boy so there’s no way a heterosexual woman would have this haircut.
And that’s the first problem with this movie – it seems to be so homophobic in its delivery. If Fred Phelps was still alive, he’d probably be watching this movie on a loop like Howard Hughes did with Ice Station Zebra. This is another Canadian thriller that never really makes sense. Allen plays Jules and she’s married to Jackie (Hannah Emily Anderson) and they’re celebrating their first year anniversary at the lake house in Jackie’s family.
Of course, it doesn’t take long before writer/director Colin Monihan has to show just how awful lesbians are by having Jules get upset at Jackie because her real name was “Megan.” She discovers this when Jackie’s childhood friend, Sarah (Martha MacIsaac) is staying at a nearby lake house with her husband, Daniel (Joey Klein). The problem is that we don’t care about Jackie or whatever she’s called and especially Jules.
So, when Jackie/Megan shoves Jules off the top of a cliff in the first act, it doesn’t seem logical that these two have been together for over a year and haven’t noticed these things about each other. It’s 2018 when this movie came out, not 1978, so Jules could’ve very easily found out more about Jackie/Megan before.
But, ok, Jules survives the fall so you think it’s going to be a cat and mouse thriller except that doesn’t happen. Actually Jackie/Megan is able to track down Jules after leaving her for dead and this happens while Jules is trying to escape across the lake. And Jackie/Megan is able to catch up with her. But Daniel sees and asks if they’re alright.
Of course, you should scream for “Help!” But Jules and Jackie/Megan decide to lie and invited Daniel and Sarah to dinner because Jackie/Megan can’t kill Jules now. I mean, they were out in the middle of the lake? Jules could’ve shoved Jackie/Megan over and hit her with the paddle. Also, Daniel and Sarah would’ve been able to get in their car and drive away. Anyway, spoiler alert, yadda-yadda-yadda Jackie/Megan kills Daniel and Sarah and forces Jules to chop up the bodies. Why? I don’t know.
But eventually, Jules gets the upper-hand after some of the most nerve-wracking fights as she knocks Jackie/Megan out. But she doesn’t something even more nerve-wracking and leaves the lake house and doesn’t even tie Jackie/Megan up. She drives a few miles before stopping and returning to do some ludicrous fighting in which Jules is pushed over the cliff again.
Oh, but what we don’t know is Jackie/Megan is a diabetic and Jules replaced her insulin with hydrogen peroxide and left her a video on her laptop. You know, it’s not like Jackie/Megan would’ve watched the video before injecting herself with the hydrogen peroxide. This movie is 98 minutes long and I feel Monihan didn’t have enough story for a plot but he had obtained a lot of financing so he felt obligated to make a bad movie rather than return the money to the financers.
I’m sure Monihan was glad when this went on video-on-demand because there’s no way this would’ve made a lot of money at the box office. No, they used Canada’s film tax shelter to make the most overrated horror/thriller of the 2010s. The fact that so many critics liked this movie and so many audiences hate it shows there is a huge disconnect between the two. My guess is the critics sat it as an LGBTQIA movie and just thought it had to be good.
Originally, it was reported this was supposed to be a husband/wife story. But we know that’s just a generic Lifetime movie thriller. You can put lipstick on a pig, but it’s still a pig.
What do you think? Please comment.
Zane Says 