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Let’s Talk About ‘Dead Island 2’
Earlier this week, Deep Silver found another developer to be unworthy of the honor of making Dead Island 2 when Yager joined series creator Techland in a growing list of studios the publisher doesn’t consider capable of delivering a sequel that lives up to a classic like Escape Dead Island. That was a garbage video game and I’m still angry I had to review it, but at least it was generous enough to warn fans to stay away from it.
At this point, escaping Dead Island sounds more appealing to me than sticking around.
That might sound harsh, and maybe it is. Dead Island 2 could be great, assuming we ever see it, but I fear my anticipation to see this series achieve even a modicum of greatness has been entirely based on the respect I have for Deep Silver.
As much as I love them for saving Saints Row developer Volition and the Metro franchise from the rubble of THQ, Dead Island has had four chances to give us a reason to care about these games and they’ve missed every time.
I even enjoyed the original game despite its numerous technical flaws. Look at it hard enough and potential can be found hiding underneath layers of clumsily executed mechanics, sloppy writing, dead-eyed NPCs and high expectations caused by an objectively depressing trailer. To this day, that promise has gone unfulfilled. Riptide felt like a hastily assembled standalone expansion, Epidemic wouldn’t stop referring to itself as a “ZOMBA”, and another that isn’t worth mentioning twice.
That trailer made grown men want to curl up in a tub filled with their own salty tears, and it only accomplished that by not being anything like the game it was so frighteningly effective in marketing to us. It’s strange to think a trailer might become the only legacy this series leaves — you know, other than being the reason we got Dying Light.
I’m not bringing this up so I can poop on Dead Island, which may very well have a bright future ahead of it, even if I’m having trouble seeing it right now. I’m more interested in hearing what you think of this game of Musical Chairs that Deep Silver is playing with the developers of Dead Island 2. Give me a reason to keep believing in this franchise. Please.
Let’s start with the good news. Lockbox looks far better than its misleading marketing materials suggest, a supernatural horror movie so darkly lit and color graded that you’ll have to squint your way through jump scares. It’s also anchored by reliable genre performers. That’s also about where the good news ends with this rote adaptation of Knifepoint Horror Podcast story “Winthrop.”
The empathetic Carla Gugino gives her all as Ellen, a saint of a woman with boundless patience who takes on life’s hard luck with a kind smile. After giving up her career as a fashion designer to become caretaker for a dying mother, she’s then forced to reinvent herself once more when her caretaker role ends. That catches us up to the events of Lockbox, where Ellen is asked to take in a cousin she hasn’t seen in quite some time who’s dealing with severe PTSD.
Just as Ellen finally establishes a real connection with Winthrop (Lou Taylor Pucci), it’s interrupted by the arrival of peculiar neighbor Vahna (Katharine Isabelle), who spells clear trouble. When Vahna shows up dead, it sets in motion a supernatural battle of possession.
Image Credit: Aura entertainment
Director Daniel Stamm (The Last Exorcism, Prey for the Devil) and screenwriter Justin Yoffe approach Lockbox in the broadest of brushstrokes, dooming it from the start with clunky storytelling and woefully underdeveloped themes of heady topics like PTSD. Winthrop is a character that comes loaded with emotional baggage and trauma that’s piled on throughout his tragic life, but much like its title, his interiority and history are treated like a tightly guarded secret meant to prolong the supernatural mystery.
The problem here, though, is that Lockbox is too sparse to sustain mystery at all, and it instead robs Winthrop of characterization. It winds up trapping the talented Pucci without anywhere to go, toggling between wounded animal and mentally disoriented.
From there, Lockbox bounds through plot developments without any sense of stakes or purpose, peppered by a smattering of haphazard paint-by-numbers jump scares. The only unwavering constant is Ellen’s resolute faith, and Stamm seems to leave it entirely to Gugino to guide confused audiences through this inconsequential story right up until its supernatural climax.
Image Credit: Aura entertainment
To give more credit, Lockbox at least injects an unconventional exorcism here; just don’t expect much in the way of explanation. When the film finally reveals the meaning behind its title, it dangles a fascinating carrot it has zero interest in delivering. More than a severe lack of fleshing out its characters beyond plot drivers or devices, this faith-based flick also seems terrified to offer any worldbuilding whatsoever.
Yoffe’s script stretches the short story beyond its means instead of fleshing it out, and Stamm fills out the gaps with cheap CGI scares and overwrought performances; Isabelle’s Vahna is beyond cartoonish in her villainy. It’s also pretty nonsensical, treating only Ellen’s faith with the utmost sincerity and largely squandering its typically reliable talent. So much so that the final imagery, pure sunkissed saccharine sentimentality, leaves you with the feeling that this horror movie might be better suited as an entry in Chicken Soup for the Soul.
Lockbox releases in select theaters on July 3, 2026.
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