Writer(s): Simon Barrett
Starring: AJ Bowen, Amy Seimetz, and Joe Swanberg
Adam Wingard is a terribly overrated filmmaker. Part of it—maybe a lot of it—no doubt has to do with the friend/partnership between himself and Brad Miska, who founded the horror news website Bloody Disgusting back in 2001. Since then, he has gone on to produce several of Wingard's films, while simultaneously overhyping the hell out of them on his own website (he called his forthcoming film, The Woods, which turned out to be a half-remake half-sequel to The Blair Witch Project “one of the scariest movies ever made” months before it came out; it opened to below-average reviews). Other genre sites also seem to be latching on, with Dread Central also lavishing constant praise on him; even the UK-based Independent referred to him as a “horror saviour” (cutesy English spelling intact) in a write-up for The Woods trailer.
I can't help but think conspiracy theory here: We all know how far contacts can take you in any industry, so just how far of a reach does Miska have? It seems every one of Wingard's releases are subject to a heavy build-up that most other horror filmmakers don't enjoy, but it all comes off as paid-for propaganda rather than legitimate praise. Hey, I could understand it if he showed a particular kind of prodigious filmmaking talent, or even had some kind of knack for a certain area of film (directors are often known for great cinematography, lighting, gore effects, etc.), but all of this praise is willfully ignorant of the simple notion that he has not only never made a great film—I have yet to see him make even a passable one.
Amy Seimetz is Sarah, a recovering alcoholic who attends weekly AA meetings. It is there that she meets Kevin (Joe Swanberg), an awkward but outgoing guy who seems to be smitten with her. She is hesitant to give in at first—she has just been through a rough relationship—but his cringe-inducing dialogue finally wins her over, and in Kevin, she finds someone that she thinks she will be able to trust again.
Around this same time, a serial killer named Garrick Turrell breaks out of prison, after a security guard has him strip down, but doesn't realize that he's concealing a razor blade. You would think checks like that before moving a prisoner would be pretty thorough and routine, but the officer must have just been having an off day. Maybe he just found out his wife was leaving him, or something, and it put his mind in a bad spot...you know, these things happen. Garrick kills the two cops, and escapes back into the real world.
The pieces to the puzzle sloooooowly start to come together. Garrick is the cause of Sarah's broken heart—the two were a couple, until she discovered that he wasn't being completely honest with her, so she put an end to the relationship. By that, I mean she found out he was a sadistic murderer (the idiot was constantly leaving the house in the middle of the night—yeah, that won't arouse suspicion) and had him put away for a long time. Only now he's out, killing people that are close to her as if trying to send a message—but also killing others that just kind of annoy him. Outside in a parking lot. Because, you know, the easiest way to get away with being a wanted fugitive whose face is plastered everywhere is to kill people in public—that's the golden rule.
Sarah never watches TV or reads newspapers, so she doesn't even know that her ex-boyfriend has escaped, until she discovers he killed one of her co-workers. Uh oh, better watch out, because Garrick is not a happy camper that she put him away, even though he seems very calm and composed and never seems like he hates her...wait, why is that? Could we maybe be in for a twist ending that I called a mile away; a twist so ignorant and implausible that it makes a shit film even shittier?
Even for Wingard, A Horrible Way to Die marks a complete regression: this movie is almost painfully bad. The cinematography appears as if they paid a ten-year-old $20 and told him just to “wing it”: I don't have a problem with the shaky style that dominated films for a while, but several shots give the appearance that the camera operator fell asleep during the scene. I'm not exaggerating—it will literally face the ground, or some item that has nothing to do with anything, while the characters continue to talk in the background. This was probably conceived as some intentional, artistic decision to create a more “intimate” bond between the viewer and the characters, but here, all it manages to do is frustrate.
Some are praising it for its “slow burn” attitude, and its focus on characterization over blood and guts, but for this to be effective, that would require there to be some kind of payoff; aside from the embarrassingly miscalculated twist, there isn't one. And, as hard as they try, there just isn't any depths to these characters; sure, we gradually learn about Sarah and Garrick's past, but we don't buy them as anything more than actors playing their parts and reciting pre-scripted lines in a D-grade horror film. There's no dimensionality to the roles. And it's one that will only be an effective film to those with the patience of a saint, or in the case of many reviewers, those that get paid to help spread the word of what a great asset Adam Wingard is to the horror genre.
How anyone could look at this and think anyone involved is the future of horror filmmaking, I have absolutely no idea, but if it ends up being true, then what I do know is that we are watching the slow, agonizing death of the entire genre.
RATING: 1.5/10
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