FTP: Red Letter Day (2019)

JANUARY 7, 2020

GENRE: THRILLER
SOURCE: BLU-RAY (OWN COLLECTION)

With four films (and counting) plus a TV series, you'd think we'd know most of the nitty gritty about The Purge by now, i.e. "How often do people retaliate during non Purge hours?" and "Does anyone just use the occasion to rob Gamestop?", but there are still many things about the concept that aren't clear, and probably always will be left that way. It can be a bit frustrating, so one thing that works in Red Letter Day's favor is that it's a stripped down, localized version along similar lines: everyone in a small planned community gets a letter one day that instructs them to kill a certain target or else they will be killed. Of course, they can all stay home and do nothing (the inverse of the "they can't expel the whole class if we all skip school today" idea), but then there's no movie - some people will inevitably embrace this strange version of self-defense killing.

With a more thought out script (and/or better actors) this could have been a solid paranoia thriller in the 10 Cloverfield Lane vein, as for all they know it might be a prank and nothing would happen if they just ignored it, but unfortunately they make a pretty big blunder the movie never really recovers from. In order for the "these are regular normal people forced into something extreme!" concept to land, the writer/director opted to have the characters act as pleasant and good-natured as possible for the first 20-25 minutes, with moms who are best buds with their teenager children, and everyone's constantly teasing each other in a loving away, and neighbors all wave to each other... it's the right idea, but it goes too far in that direction, to the extent that no one actually comes off as a normal person. To me, they feel more like robots mimicking the human behavior they witnessed in daytime TV ads for cleaning products and brew-at-home coffee.

And even later they don't really act natural; the mom of the central trio (dad's out of the picture) occasionally really feels like a mama bear protecting her cubs, but more often than not I found myself wondering if the actress had ever once seen someone worried about their child before. At one point, when both of her kids are in danger (one badly injured, the other missing) a woman (Tiffany "Violet" Helm from F13: New Beginning!) from a church offers to bring the son to the hospital, and rather say "Oh perfect, thanks!" and rush off to find her daughter, she stops to talk about perhaps donating to her church or volunteering at one of their events to make it up to them, as if that would be the first thing on her mind just then? It's one of a few examples where I couldn't buy into the movie's scenario because I was being kept at bay by how unnatural everyone was acting.

On the plus side, there are some terrific practical gore FX (highlight: a very fucked up jaw on a very deserving "victim") and at 76 minutes with lengthy credits (the director credits themselves three times) it doesn't wear out its welcome and is only asking you for a little bit more of your time than an episode of a pay cable TV show. And if you have the blu-ray, you get some excellent Creepshow style artwork on the menu, though it curiously draws the protagonist's son as a jock when in the movie he's like a dorkier Ron Weasley. If you can get past the forced "nice people" performances it's a decent enough timekiller, though these "What would YOU do?" kind of movies really need a more natural setup for the payoffs to land.

What say you?

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