WE NEED TO DO SOMETHING creates horror and mystery in a tight space
WE NEED TO DO SOMETHING
Directed by Sean King O’Grady
Written by Max Booth III
Starring Sierra McCormick, Pat Healy, Vinessa Shaw, John James Cronin, and Lisette Alexis
Running time 1 hour, 37 minutes
Currently unrated but contains adult language, graphic violence and ritual self harm
By Hunter Bush, Staff Writer
We Need to Do Something is a tight little locked-room thriller that gets stranger the longer you watch, like a magic eye picture painted by a mad monk. With a strong undercurrent of Family in Crisis drama, some gnarly effects and images, and a lot of very dark humor that doesn’t quite land every time, in its best moments WNtDS achieves the tone of something like a Creepshow or Tales from the Darkside segment.
There’s a huge storm coming and even in the first few minutes, as we watch a family gather in their large (not like, crazy-big but all four of them fit comfortably without touching) bathroom you know that someone is hiding something. Maybe several someones. Thermos-clutching Dad (Pat Healy) seems edgy, but Healy kind of always seems edgy, it’s kind of my dude’s whole thing. Mom (Vinessa Shaw) seems maybe a little too focused on making sure everyone keeps things light and doesn’t worry. Older sister Melissa (Sierra McCormick) snipes with younger brother Bobby (John James Cronin), while frantically texting someone and trying to get a word in edgewise about how the storm seems… not normal.
As we’ll learn, everybody has a lot going on beneath the surface. Except Bobby, who’s all Id - when he’s hungry, or has to pee, or Melissa makes a face at him, everybody’s gotta hear about it. Turns out Dad has a bit of a drinking problem (that Thermos wasn’t just coffee) and a bit of a temper, and Mom’s been pursuing extramarital interests, but the cherry atop this sundae of secrets is Melissa who thinks something she and her ggf (goth girlfriend) Amy (Lisette Alexis) did might be responsible for what’s happening. Once they realize a downed tree has them trapped in the bathroom, these tensions begin their slow boil.
From those first few minutes, writer Max Booth III is playing with our perceptions, and as the story unfolds, he starts to expand into playing with reality. Melissa and Amy’s actions before the start of the film (which involve magic) are having a greater impact than they’d anticipated and that’s where We Need to Do Something loses a step in a few different respects, one that it never really regains.
Firstly, there’s a central tenet of magical belief that says anything you put out will come back at you threefold which, if you’re aware of it, kind of helps explain what’s going on, when combined with the stuff that actually does get explained. But the way things are set up throughout the movie, it seems more like things are building to a confrontation with an entity of some kind which (slight spoilers) is not the case. If the magic stuff were a little better laid out, I think things would feel more satisfying.
On top of that, the addition of magic to things actually takes away from the increasing weirdness between the family because it begins to seem like maybe nothing in the bathroom is real, and that makes it seem consequenceless. None of this is aided by the budgetary constraints which mean we have multiple instances of characters looking offscreen and describing things that we don’t see. In the language of film, that sort of thing usually means that what the characters are describing may not be real and that, combined with the addition of magic, actually serves to remove weight from events that come later since you assume nothing is really real.
Possibly as a result of these implications, director Sean King O’Grady keeps the camera firmly rooted and grounded. No dutch angles, no fancy pans or zooms or anything that would make things seem less realistic. It makes sense but is much less fun to look at and gives the whole thing a television feel, hence my Tales from the Darkside name drop up at the top. Even some of the humor feels of that ilk, like four days into their confinement, watching Pat Healy chew makeup remover pads for their alcohol content.
What really sets WNtDS apart is the horror. From being locked in a confined place, to starvation and dehydration, to whatever it is that’s outside, the script here checks a lot of boxes, albeit some better than others. There is, however, one truly fantastic scare in here. It’s the kind of thing where you know from the first instant that it’s not going to be good, but you have no idea what’s coming and boy does it send chills up your spine when it happens! The effects that there are should also be praised; there’s some gnarly moments at play here that hint at what kind of movie we could have gotten with a slightly more robust budget behind it.
The movie attempts to raise stakes by occasionally mentioning that the family is getting hungrier and hungrier, but it never has the weight it needs to make their decisions land with me. The cast is solid, and as their performances become more manic and heightened, We Need to Do Something creates some really fun places, but the tone wavers and the movie seems unable to commit to those moments. I think this would work really well in a group watch setting where everyone could have a lot of fun with it, but even for a solo first time viewing experience, this was a fun watch.
We Need to Do Something comes to theaters, digital and VOD on September 3rd.
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