PLOT: Stranded on a Thai island while a typhoon approaches, an American couple discovers that the locals have some very unusual traditions.
REVIEW: The screenplay for director Darren Lynn Bousman's new film is credited to three writers – Ari Margolis, James Morley III, and David Tish – but the three of them together weren't able to make the story feel entirely coherent. Is it the latest take on THE WICKER MAN? Was THE SERPENT AND THE RAINBOW the inspiration? Is it lifting from ROSEMARY'S BABY? How about blending all of them together, with some extra weirdness and trippy visuals thrown in to really test the audience's patience?
When DEATH OF ME (WATCH IT HERE) begins it looks like it's going to be the story of a traveler's worst nightmare, a vacation gone terribly wrong. Maggie Q and Luke Hemsworth star as Christine and Neil, an American couple who are told they have to evacuate the Thai island they're staying on because it's going to be hit by a typhoon in twelve hours. Their attempt to evacuate fails when they realize they don't have their passports or Christine's phone, but the ferry does leave with their luggage on board. So now they're stuck on the island until the next ferry later in the day – which gives them some time to try to figure out why they don't have any memory of what they did the previous night.
Video on Neil's phone just deepens the mystery, because after a waitress slipped them a drink that put them in a different state of mind, it sure looks like Neil strangled Christine and buried her corpse. Well, that could explain why she has a bruised neck and keeps vomiting dirt. That's when the troubling "What if I lost my passport and possessions while in a different country?" scenario makes way for supernatural horror, and it's downhill from there.
Most horror fans are going to know exactly where this movie is going as soon as we're shown that the locals don't believe the typhoon is going to hit their island – after all, there hasn't been a typhoon there for two hundred years – and that they're preparing to throw a festival. From very early on, the film has us twiddling our thumbs, just waiting for it to reach that predictable conclusion while it takes its time to get there, dragging out the running time with scene after scene of Christine hallucinating and questioning her reality.
Q and Hemsworth do fine work in their roles and put in their best effort to get the viewer invested in the strange journey their characters find themselves on, but neither the presentation of the story or the characters were interesting enough to draw me in. DEATH OF ME is only 94 minutes long, but it feels like a slog – and when the presence of Alex Essoe (as a fellow American Christine and Neil meet on the island) can't liven up your movie, there are definitely some pacing and storytelling issues at play.
Kelly Bronwen Jones, Ingkarat Jaraswongkosol (a.k.a. Kat Ingkarat), and Chatchawan Kamonsakpitak make strong impressions as locals, with Jones getting some especially good moments. Unfortunately, their performances are stuck in a movie that eventually gets very tough to sit through.
If you're a fan of Bousman or any of the actors in the cast, give DEATH OF ME a chance and maybe you'll have a better viewing experience than I did. I can't recommend it based on anything that happens in the story.
Saban Films will be giving DEATH OF ME a theatrical, VOD, and digital release on October 2nd.
The comment section exists to allow readers to discuss the article constructively and respectfully, focused on the topic at hand.
What’s Not Allowed