A family trapped in their bathroom begin to believe what’s keeping them
there may be of supernatural origin.
Review by
Benjamin Poole
Directed by: Sean King O’Grady
Starring: Sierra McCormick, Pat Healy, Lisette Alexis, Vinessa Shaw, John James Cronin, Ozzy Osbourne
Just thinking back to the first lockdown and the giggles we had.
Remember Joe Wicks doing keep fit for people with unfeasibly large
sitting rooms? Queuing to get into Lidl? Pub quizzes over Zoom? What
were all that about, eh?! And, within the online horror film community,
this ongoing chin stroking speculation concerning How Horror Will
Respond To The Pandemic. Problem with such conjecture was that the first
lockdown was essentially an alienating sensation of jaded, gnawing
terror for most and crippling isolation for some: in short, it was
similar enough to a horror narrative already, and too close to home in a
way that the once removed Vietnam allegories of '70s horror, say, were
not. Wouldn’t Covid inspired horror all be a bit on the nose? Some
plucky opportunists did crop up: Rob Savage’s
excellent-the-first-time-you-see-it
Host, FrightFest closer The Sadness (which I haven’t seen)
and cash-ins like Corona Zombies (which I have no desire
to see), but I’m still uncertain how far the pandemic and all its frank
miseries lends itself to the shadows and metaphor intrinsic to horror.
Sean King O'Grady (director) and Max Booth III’s (writer
from his original novella) We Need to Do Something is an
intriguing entry into the corona canon. Booth III’s book of the same
name and script were written pre-pandemic, but with huckster perception,
O’Grady (formerly a director of documentaries, and, according to imdb, a
producer by trade - a role he fulfils for
We Need to Do Something) recognised that, "without directly addressing the nightmare we are
currently living through, Max created a hellish allegory that still
manages to capture the collective trauma we’re all experiencing," and
presumably reconfigured the screenplay to reflect Covid context. Yeah,
cheers for that, then.
We Need to Do Something sees us stuck indoors with a
typical family of mum, dad, older sister, younger brother and doomed
dog. The film opens with a craftily disorienting en media res, which
positions the audience on the back foot, as narrative information
arrives only via carefully apportioned flashbacks. All we know is that
there’s been some sort of mad weather outside which has meant that the
clan can’t leave the household: an offscreen tree has fallen across
their front door. What’s more, there’s some foreboding folio coming from
the surrounding area too, so probably best to sit it out, you know, just
wait here for a little while. See what happens...
What happens is that the family - who are potentially in some sort of
limbo, a possibility the film plays with from the off - quickly go a bit
mad due to being all locked in a bathroom and having to perform their
business in close vicinity (I’d take my chances with the exterior
growls, thanks), and progressively dehydrate/starve due to lack of
provisions. It helps that the dad is played by the great
Pat Healy, beloved veteran of this sort of indie fare, and who is
far too controlled an actor to allow for histrionics and instead
provides a controlled, intuitive menace which in turn sets the tone of
the film. The film’s weird feel, and shifting logic, is fittingly
dreadful, with 90 minutes and change drawing you inexorably in. And just
when you let your guard down to this ostensibly stir-crazy story, a
couple of genuinely shocking moments occur, and are properly
frightening.
Of course, the film has no idea how to end itself. Flashback sequences
lead us to understand the situation the cornered kith and kin find
themselves in, which is due to a lovelorn teen daughter, and the
evergreen propensity adolescents have to mess around with things they
have no real understanding of. The chamber play aspect of the film is
claustrophobic, but in a way that is recognisable, rather than
evocative. The Cthulan nudges about the edge of the narrative, and the
teen angst at the heart of it, would have perhaps been better explored
than We Need to Do Something’s already over-familiar nightmare lockdown stylings.
We Need to Do Something is on
Shudder UK now.