MOVIE REVIEW – Megan Fox stars in this grotesque, morbid and yet highly entertaining horror-thriller about a woman handcuffed to a corpse and her unlikely ordeal.

 

In Till Death, Megan Fox stars as Emma, a stunningly beautiful woman who married at an age when she was not yet sane and made poor choices. That’s partly why she’s having an affair with someone else – although she breaks up with her lover to try to make things right. Still, she has bad luck with her creepy husband Mark (Eoin Macken), an unnervingly intense character whose romantic gestures are menacing; for example, when he blindfolds Emma and takes her to their holiday home, where she is treated to a night of sexual bliss. But what Emma was expecting the next morning is something she never expected in her worst dream…

 

Home Alone

 

Part home invasion “chiller”, part bloody thriller with horror elements, this wintery thriller may turn out to be the summer movie you’ve been longing for: at once deliberately undemanding, a little silly, but still a truly gripping and well-paced, taut, exciting cinematic experience. In director Scott Dale’s opening film, he superbly directs ‘Transformers’ star Megan Fox, who unexpectedly manages to mix the roles of scream queen and determined survival horror heroine. Thanks to Jason Carvey’s taut screenplay, Till Death is a true female story of perseverance and retribution, and of a rich, beautiful woman who tries to break her relationship with a controlling, toxic and powerful man against all the wrong odds.

The film doesn’t turn into a psychological drama or a Shining, but is closer to The Reef, or a sort of more morbid, crueler, perverse version of Screw You Burglars.</blockquote
As for the former: although the classically beautiful and muscular Fox is not being hunted here by a ferocious, hungry shark, his ordeal is similar, just as his agonizing struggle for survival is similar to that of the wounded Blake Lively, as he can only acquire life-saving tools in small increments, relying on nothing but his wits, reflexes and the most limited resources at his disposal.

Till Death becomes a great thriller not just because of its bombshell star or Dale’s direction, but rather because of Carvey’s inventive script, which draws from a small well of narrative possibilities and maximizes their value as Emma (Fox) fights for her life to survive the hostile circumstances she is thrust into.

 

This husband is nobody’s fool

 

In the first moments of Till Death, Emma is in deep conversation with a man – clearly the end of a romantic relationship that is fruitless and unviable. However, the young man, Tom (Aml Ameen), is not Emma’s husband, but the actual husband, rising star in his law firm, Mark (Eoin Macken), with whom she is having an affair – on her wedding anniversary, no less.

Predictably, Mark is nobody’s fool, even if he pretends (initially at least) not to know about his wife’s affair. So at first, there are only sideways glances and pregnant silences, with a particularly awkward anniversary dinner during which Till Death subtly reveals the kind of man Mark is. He is the aggressive, macho type who condescendingly calls his wife a “dummy” (so far, we’re talking Patrick Bateman-like character), or feels empowered to tell her what she should wear, and takes her to a remote, secluded place as an anniversary surprise, completely blindfolded. The dynamic between the two is painfully but aptly chilling – he is demanding, she doesn’t protest, and she often recalls her days as a struggling photographer before Mark supposedly ‘rescued’ her.

 

Surprise acting from Megan

 

But Emma soon proves that she is not just a silly girl in trouble. After waking up in the lake house on the morning of a manipulatively romantic night with Mark, she suddenly has a terrifying experience, but as she is chained to a corpse, she rises to the occasion and finds her way out of the completely empty house, which Mark has cleared of all useful tools and sharp objects. Emma fights for her life from then on, bruised and bloodied for long periods of time, chained and dragged, literally and figuratively, to her toxic marriage. As his would-be assailants turn up looking for some of the diamonds Mark has promised them – the pair are Callan Mulvey’s deadly knife-wielding Bobby Ray and Jack Roth’s reluctant villain Jimmy – he must not only outwit the bloodthirsty pair, but manoeuvre through the cracks of harsh reality.

The next act is a cleverly plotted game of cat-and-mouse, with a useless mobile phone, a disabled car, a pair of handcuffs, a freezing shed, knee-deep snow and (of course) a frozen lake all playing important plot elements. There’s nothing in the ending of Till Death that we don’t figure out well in advance, but the well-deserved finale doesn’t feel annoying despite its obviousness. The other positive here is Fox’s gradually maturing performance, which starts off a little emotionless and expressionless, but gets better and better as Emma becomes more and more life-threatening and desperate. Just when you’d write Megan Fox off as a pretty but empty actress, she reclaims your attention and deserves it.

-Zardoz-