Sweetheart (2019)

SEPTEMBER 1, 2020

GENRE: MONSTER, SURVIVAL
SOURCE: STREAMING (NETFLIX)

One of my favorite little bits of movie trivia is that Paramount re-edited Another 48 Hrs so severely that they managed to excise the part explaining the title, which is that Jack only had 48 hours to clear his name (a snippet is left in the trailer). I thought of that during Sweetheart when the movie's title finally makes sense, as it's a (clearly patronizing) nickname for the protagonist delivered from her boyfriend, a character whose arrival dilutes the film's best asset and is played by a pretty bad actor to boot. I'd rather be writing "Why is this movie called Sweetheart?" right now and finding out later that they wisely cut the guy out of it to strengthen the film.

Of course then it'd be even shorter, since it's only like 82 minutes as is. The plot is simple: our hero (Kiersey Clemons) washes up on an island shore after her boat sinks, with everyone else seemingly dead (one friend washes up with her and dies almost instantly), and goes about doing the Cast Away thing of taking stock of her supplies, finding shelter/food, and trying to figure out how to get back to the mainland. But unlike Tom Hanks, she also has to contend with a monster who comes out at night and, after devouring her friend's corpse, has its sights set on her. Repetitive and slightly hamstrung in the suspense department (though it'd be funny if they pulled a Psycho and killed her off halfway through, focusing on the monster for the rest), sure, but it works just fine for a while.

But then her boyfriend and another friend show up, having survived on a life raft for the past couple days. Their presence does explain a few things (with Clemons arriving on the island in the first shot of the film and having no one to talk to, exposition isn't exactly plentiful), but it also kickstarts an unresolved mystery involving their other friend. Clemons borrows her boyfriend's swiss army knife and discovers some blood on it, and later she sees blood in the raft as well, suggesting that they killed the guy, not the monster, but it's never clarified. Worse, it's never necessary - even if we assume the pair murdered him in order to improve their supply ration, or even give them some privacy to pass the time on the raft by screwing each others' brains out, there's no payoff or retribution for it. I was thinking perhaps Clemons would realize her jerk boyfriend was planning to off her as well and maybe use him as bait for the creature as payback, but nope. The monster just gets him normally, and the movie goes back to being more or less silent.

Which is fine, because that's when the movie's at its best anyway. Clemons is always a scene stealer so it's great, and fun, to have her in every frame by herself, as if her reward for being the best thing about other movies where she was in a supporting role (obligatory time to mention that Neighbors 2 is way underrated). I kind of wish that her character wasn't such a survival expert though; apparently she also saw Cast Away because she's only on the island for about 90 seconds before she retrieves a coconut and also a sharp rock to split it open, with zero other attempts to open it first. Later she seemingly spears a fish on her first time out trying, which again seems like something that would take some trial and error for the city girl we're told she is. The best parts of these kind of survival movies, at least to me, is seeing them figure out those basics, but it's like she already had some training earlier.

And the monster is pretty awesome too. The first time we see it, silhouetted against a setting sun, is a pretty great reveal, and it looks good in closeups as well. WETA did it, so you can be assured it's of high quality in terms of looking real (and not all CGI), but it's also got a better design than I'd expect for a modern movie monster. I might even recognize it out of context someday, which isn't something I could say for most (looking at you, JJ Abrams). I also liked that even though it's set on an island and the open water around it, the two best attack scenes were of the claustrophobic variety: one inside a log she'd hidden in (he rolls it around) and the other on her enclosed lifeboat, where he's attacking from below. Things open up for their big showdown though, which feels swiped from a Predator movie, but I guess there's not much else they can do with the established limited means.

On that note, some of her supplies come from an old/deserted campsite, owned by people who were most assuredly eaten by the monster. We don't know too much about them, but I like how they use an old Game Boy (the green/white screen kind!) to establish how long ago they were there (at least 25 years, ballpark). That's the kind of visual storytelling I enjoy most, so it's kind of amusing to see it deployed in a movie that keeps going out of its way to suggest human on human murder has occurred and then do nothing with it. Oh well. Like You Should Have Left, it's a movie that lucked out by going VOD (though in this case it was always the plan, I believe, not something COVID caused) as its faults are easier to shrug off and enjoy the movie for what it is. Plus since she's by herself 75% of the time I never felt that momentary "Hey, be careful!" feeling I get when I see other recent movies where people are just going to the store without a mask or sitting down at a restaurant. So that's nice.

What say you?

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