Those Who Wish Me Dead
Gillipedia Official Rating: We didn’t start the fire
If you haven’t heard of the name
Taylor Sheridan before, I can’t blame you. He’s relatively new to the scene,
and despite having some acting credits, his most significant contributions have
been from behind the camera. Most notably, he wrote the Denis Villeneuve
directed film Sicario. He followed that up with the critically acclaimed
Hell or High Water (he also very recently co-wrote the Prime film Tom
Clancy’s Without Remorse starring Michael B. Jordan). After that, he took
over directing duties himself and made Wind River. There’s definitely a
signature look with all of these films. Usually pretty intense, these films to
varying degrees have solid action mixed with interesting landscapes and locales.
The same goes for his newest film.
Another trait among Sheridan’s films
(particularly Hell or High Water) is the opposite of what you see in
horror films—smart characters make smart decisions. Sometimes these are bigger
pieces of the plot, but most of the time, they are heat of the moment types of
actions that simply make sense. Relatively early on in Those Who Wish Me
Dead is a car crash with a dad and his son. The dad is fatally injured and
wants to ensure there’s no trace of his son. He opens the passenger door, the
kid gets out, and the dad closes the door shut again. I swear to you if the
same scenario happened in a basic slasher film, that passenger side door would
be wide open and tip off the villain that there was another passenger. One more
example: the villains of the film take a hostage as they search for some
characters. They reach an abandoned firetower where the only way up is to climb
up a ladder. They send the hostage up the tower, and if he finds anyone up
there, he needs to bring them down. If there’s no one in there, he needs to set
a fire in the middle of the room and burn the place down to prove there’s no
one in there. It’s a scenario that is well-planned from the villains and
provides true intrigue and worry over what the hostage will do if he finds
anybody in the tower.
As for the story to the kind of vague
title of this movie, it’s like a mix of Only the Brave with Wind
River. Our main star is the ageless Angelina Jolie who works with the
parks department as a firefighter and gets assigned a firetower to keep watch
over. At the same time, there’s a father who uncovers some information that he
shouldn’t have, and people want him dead for it. The father escapes with his
son, and they head to the only people they can trust—friends of Jolie. As the
bad guys close in and all paths intertwine, a fire in the forest will act as
the catalyst to everything.
Let’s talk about the cast because for
a film that I feel like has had little promotion, there’s some big names here.
The two main bad guys are English actors playing Americans—you have Lord
Baelish from Game of Thrones, and you have the blueist-eyed actor in
Nicholas Hoult. Jolie’s friends are The Punisher actor Jon Bernthal
playing a cop, and his wife, someone I haven’t heard of but she gets a couple
really cool moments to shine. I should also mention that the kid here isn’t a
terrific actor, but he’s good enough. Oh and Tyler Perry makes an appearance
for approximately one scene. To his credit it’s a good performance, but it’s so
brief that he isn’t even credited with top billing.
Prominently featured in the trailer is
a big forest fire that starts about halfway through and obviously makes its way
to the climax of the film. It’s well utilized, but if the shot lingers on it
for a little too long, you start to recognize the same animation and the color palette
is too similar and that’s when you can tell that it’s CGI. That’s right, bet
you people didn’t know I was an expert when it comes to visual effects too.
The final fight is a little
disappointing. The villains start feeling more desperate and don’t make as
smart of choices as the beginning of the film. And it all ends up with mostly a
fistfight. Yes, the fire does get used, but I think they could’ve used more of
the cat-and-mouse tactics from earlier in the film and ramped it up with the
fire for a still exciting conclusion that wasn’t a basic close combat fight.
Sheridan does a fine job directing, but I’d
take all of his works previously mentioned over this film. I’d describe
this as fine entertainment, but you don’t need to bother going too far out of
your way to see it.
In
Brief:
- It’s finally happening. A Quiet Place Part 2 comes out at the end of the month. The first one was an amazing experience in theaters, and I’m incredibly excited for this film as well.
- Mortal
Kombat has some
cringey moments and bad acting, but all in all, it was entertaining. Solid
visuals, nice callbacks to the games (like the way the fights are framed), and
some actual solid martial arts.
- I watched the Marvel movie nobody knows about. The New Mutants is like 10 Cloverfield Lane and Glass. Teenage mutants in a psych ward they can’t leave. Pretty lowkey with some interesting characters and ideas, but it should’ve embraced horror more. Plus, the twist of the film is obvious after the first 20 minutes. It’s PG-13, and I definitely believe that was a mistake. Considering its poor performance, this appears to be a one and done. I’m happy for the experiment, but the results left me with something to be desired.
- Guardians
of the Galaxy and Jumanji
star Karen Gillan stars in Oculus, and her ability to do an American
accent is so good that I had no idea it was her the entire film. It also stars
the guy who plays Robin in the weird new Titans show. Anyways, I was
enjoying the film all the way up until the ending. Hated that ending. Not
satisfying. But, it’s still a better than average horror film.
