Movies
[SXSW Review] ‘What Keeps You Alive’ is a Tense and Darkly Humorous Tale of Betrayal
What would you do if the person you married isn’t who they said they were? That is the question that Colin Minihan‘s (Grave Encounters, Extraterrestrial) What Keeps You Alive aims to answer over the course of its 100 minutes. While it runs into some issues with pacing and could have used a firmer hand in the editing room, What Keeps You Alive is a simultaneously terrifying and (intentionally?) humorous tale of betrayal.
When Jackie (Hannah Emily Anderson, fresh off her scene-stealing turn in last year’s Jigsaw) and Jules (Brittany Allen, also from Jigsaw and It Stains the Sand Red) go on a vacation to a remote cabin on their one-year anniversary, they are expecting a weekend of relaxation. Shortly after they arrive, Jackie’s childhood friend Sarah (Martha MacIsaac, The Last House on the Left) shows up on their doorstep and refers to Jackie as Megan, leading Jules to suspect that the woman she fell in love with has been keeping more than a few secrets from her. Before long, Jackie’s true nature becomes clear and Jules is faced with the ultimate betrayal.
To say any more about the plot of What Keeps You Alive would be a disservice to anyone reading this, so I’ll keep a tight lid on the proceedings of the film for the remainder of this review. Just know that there is much more to Jackie than meets the eye, and Jules is in for a rude awakening.
Minihan’s script doesn’t do anything particularly innovative beyond its first act reveal, but this is ultimately a study of how one woman handles a brutal betrayal and then fights to survive. The script does dip its toes into the nature versus nurture debate but never really dives deep into the issue, making the film a rather surface-level approach to the subject matter. Still, it is refreshing to see a lesbian couple at the forefront of a genre film, especially considering that their sexual orientation doesn’t play a factor into the plot at all. Horror films featuring mentally unstable queer characters all too often have that queerness play a part in their illness, but that is not the case with Jackie, which is a testament to Minihan’s script.
Anderson and Allen are believable as the supposedly happily married couple. Anderson chews scenery with glee as Jackie and it is an entertaining sight to behold; but it is Allen, so underserved in Jigsaw, who manages to steal the show. She is able to capture Jules’ feeling of betrayal and the immeasurable amount of sadness at what she is forced to face. She has been put in a horrifying situation and that horror is palpable when she is on screen.
Minihan and cinematographer David Schuurman work in some nifty camera tricks to help mirror Jules’ paranoia and disorientation (one particular instance in which the camera is strapped to an oar is particularly effective), as well as long takes tracking Jules’ movement around the isolated cabin. He is able to sustain a considerable amount of tension throughout, with a highlight being a rowboat chase sequence that is a lot more suspenseful than a rowboat chase sequence sounds.
One only wishes that Minihan had as skilled a hand in the editing room as he did in the directing department. Even at a brief 98 minutes, the film could afford to have a few minutes shaved off of it. It’s possible Minihan may have been too close with the project to cut what needed to be cut (he acts as director, screenwriter, editor and producer), so hiring someone else for the job may have been a wise choice.
Furthermore, several moments in the film manage to stretch credulity. Jules undergoes some heavy injuries that she recovers from a little too easily, and the final second of the film inspired a groan from this critic. You can see what Minihan was going for, but it just doesn’t work. The film also doesn’t completely seem to know what kind of tone it’s going for. Jackie’s dialogue can come across as a little mustache-twirly one moment and then terrifying the next. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but the shifts in tone are sometimes jarring.
All in all, What Keeps You Alive is a solid thriller that works more often than it doesn’t thanks to the performances of Anderson and Allen. Those, combined with Minihan’s skilled direction, make for one of the better survival horror films to come out recently. Just don’t watch it with your spouse as it may plant a few seeds of doubt about who they really are.
There’s been a lot of talk about how Christopher Nolan snuck in some horror elements into his epic adaptation of The Odyssey. However, even before the Cyclops began to eat Ithican soldiers and Circe subjected them to magical body-horror, cinemagoers were already witnessing supernatural terror through a certain trailer that was attached to most IMAX screenings of Nolan’s film.
It turns out that this trailer was for Rob Savage’s Other Mommy, an adaptation of Bird Box author Josh Malerman’s horror novel, Incidents Around the House. With the teaser now available online and revealing that the award-winning Jessica Chastain is playing the titular antagonist (as well as her ill-fated human counterpart), not to mention the fact that the picture is being helmed by the director of hits like Host and The Boogeyman, genre fans are understandably hyped for this upcoming thriller.
That’s why I’ve decided to take a closer look at the trailer and share four things we learned from this sneak peek at Other Mommy!
4. Rob Savage is Going Back to His Supernatural Horror Roots
I know I’m in the minority when I admit that Dashcam is my favorite Rob Savage movie, but even I understand why the filmmakers’ fans have been waiting a while for the director to get back to telling more grounded paranormal stories as he did with 2020’s Host.
Other Mommy obviously isn’t a found footage movie, but moments like the poltergeist activity on the kitchen table combined with the nature of the source material, which actually features a full-on exorcism, indicate that this adaptation is more than a simple creature feature. That’s why I think Savage is once again going to borrow from the same ghostly narratives that made his debut film such a viral hit.
3. Other Mommy is a More Convincing Doppelganger in the Adaptation
Part of the horror from Malerman’s original novel came from the fact that the entity taking on the form of Bela’s (Arabella Olivia Clark) mother wasn’t very good at passing itself off as human. This resulted in several uncanny moments where other characters began to notice that there was something visibly wrong with the family and decided to keep their distance.
Savage’s film appears to be taking a different route, with the trailer showing a version of the entity that can, at least physically, imitate Chastain’s character perfectly. This change is likely the result of the filmmakers wanting to incorporate more paranoid scenes where Bela and her father, played by Jay Duplass, are confused about which Mommy is safe to interact with.
2. The Family is Also Better Off This Time Around
Incidents Around the House featured some interesting subtext about how poverty can negatively affect American family dynamics. After all, the main characters were already feeling scared and isolated before the entity emerged from Bela’s closet and began scratching at their emotional wounds. The trailer for the movie, however, depicts the family as being relatively well off before these incidents begin to occur.
I can only imagine that this part of the story was changed so that the family’s fall from grace can be even more dramatic as the mom and dad’s pasts are revealed and Bela falls further into the clutches of the demonic antagonist.
1. Jessica Chastain is Embodying Evil Dead Rise’s Alyssa Sutherland
Mothers turning against their children is one of the most disturbing horror tropes out there (just check out classics like Hereditary and Carrie if you need proof), but it takes a remarkably skilled actress to pull off such a monstrous transformation. This is especially true when both a regular, loving mother and the Other share the screen in the same film.
That’s why I appreciate how Chastain appears to be channeling another evil redhead mother that recently traumatized audiences with her performance. It’s too early to be sure, but I’m fairly confident that Chastain’s character has at least some amount of Ellie in her cinematic DNA – Ellie being the iconic deadite brought to life by Australian actress Alyssa Sutherland in 2023’s Evil Dead Rise.
Let us know in the comments if you think we missed any important details from the trailer, and don’t forget to check out Other Mommy when it hits theaters on October 9!
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