Review by Nia Edwards-Behi
This keeps happening to me. I hear about a film. I avoid the specifics of why everyone loves it. It becomes something of a festival darling or a genre fan favourite. Then, I eventually watch it and… oh. That’s it? Is the hype machine doing its worst, here, or am I just contrary? Adam Wingard’s A Horrible Way to Die is exactly one of those films. It has gained a great deal of praise through a successful festival run, and deserves a great deal of that praise. I will try very hard to explain why a beautifully directed and wonderfully acted film left me cold.
A Horrible Way to Die tells of Sarah (Amy Seimetz), a recovering alcoholic trying to rebuild her life having escaped past trauma. As we witness her recovery, through her burgeoning relationship with Kevin (Joe Swanberg), we are also privy to the life of Garrick Turrell (A J Bowen), a convicted serial killer on the run. We soon learn that Garrick is searching for Sarah, and he is the trauma she’s tried so desperately to escape.
A great deal of skill lies in A Horrible Way to Die’s non-linear narrative. Information is revealed to us completely out of order, but successfully so – not once does the film feel convoluted (well, not until the end, but more on that later) or confusing. As a result, the film keeps enough from us to remain intriguing, while allowing a great deal of insight. While withholding a reasonable amount of narrative detail, A Horrible Way to Die’s biggest strength lies with its characters. In the central role of Sarah, Amy Seimetz gives an absolutely wonderful, nuanced performance. Sarah is damaged, but she is recovering. She is incredibly sympathetic – we aren’t patronised with a simpering, woe-is-me recovering alcoholic stereotype, and instead we’re offered a character who struggles. If she’s struggling, it means she’s trying, and it’s refreshing to have a character who stumbles and makes mistakes in a rather human way, rather than a character constructed to complain in lieu of actually doing anything. Her somewhat fumbling relationship with Kevin, is, by and large, endearing, Kevin being equally as dysfunctional, his awkwardly well-intentioned advances appearing quite natural.
But hey – we’re not watching a romance. All the while, we’re treated to Garrick’s life on the run, with a few new murders thrown under his belt. Much seems to have been made of A J Bowen’s performance, and, while impressive enough, it didn’t particularly blow me away or leave Garrick as a memorable anti-hero in my mind. There seems to be significantly less depth to his character, as he kills someone, cries a bit, kills someone again, cries…it’s all a bit like he’s jumping up and down on one spot, rather than going anywhere. In the flashbacks to his and Sarah’s relationship, little is revealed other than that he appears to have been a loving enough partner…except for when he’s sneaking off in the middle of the night to his garage of death. Something about Garrick did not wholly convince me of his status as fearsome serial killer, but I can’t put my finger on what.
Additional to its strength in characters, Adam Wingard’s direction of A Horrible Way to Die is quite masterful. Normally, I’m one of those people who abhors the over-used shaky-cam style of filming. However, it really, really works here. The focus is constantly changing, the frame never wholly still. It’s incredibly stylised, but it’s particularly effective in not only reflecting the unstable characters depicted in the film, but, as it progresses, seems to instil in the film an over-bearing sense of unease, as though the uncertainty of narrative and character lies in the very fabric of the film. The score, an ambient, insidious thing, adds to this sensation, and is put to great use in the film.
So, wait… why didn’t I like this film? It looks great, is wonderfully acted, interestingly plotted… well, I have two primary gripes. Firstly, the use of gore in the film. The film is pervasively violent in its aura, but it feels, at times, as though Wingard did not have faith in his own abilities, and so threw in some ‘ew, gross’ moments to compensate. The few moments of graphic imagery in the film are frustratingly conspicuous, and, for me, incredibly distracting from the otherwise wonderfully crafted film.
This is a small complaint, though, compared to my main point of annoyance: the overly sign-posted, unnecessary, ineffective and utterly pointless twist. If you’ve crafted a film so well, to stick on a twist in the last five minutes will serve no purpose except to make me think that you never had an ending for your story. The twist is dull, on-the-nose, convoluted… and just plain lazy. Without going into too much detail, it undermines the very basis of the rest of the film – its interesting characters – to the detriment of some and to the WELL DUH YOU DON’T SAY of others. Wingard seems to use a twist as justification to leave the whole film unsatisfyingly open-ended. I adore films that do not provide full narrative closure (as non-horror examples, cf. The Wrestler, Dogtooth, Shame), but that lack of closure still needs to work as an ending to a film. A Horrible Way to Die did not succeed to do so for me, and as a result does not end with a satisfying sense of ambiguity, but instead with an overwhelming sense of laziness.
Maybe I’m turning into a cynic. Maybe I’m a pedant who gets too hung up over little details like, er, an unsatisfying ending. There’s no doubting that Wingard is a talent to watch, and A Horrible Way to Die is a film worth watching. Regardless, I can’t help but feel a little resentful of being denied a wholly satisfying film experience.
Anchor Bay Entertainment release A Horrible Way To Die to Region 2 DVD and Blu-Ray from 19th March.