We watch several movies a week. Every Friday, we'll talk a little about some of the movies we watched that we felt were Worth Mentioning.
Cody checks out a new horror thriller.
The following review originally appeared on ArrowintheHead.com
AS CERTAIN AS DEATH (2023)
Hutch Dano is the grandson of legendary character actor Royal Dano (whose nearly 200 acting credits include The Red Badge of Courage, Messiah of Evil, The Outlaw Josey Wales, Something Wicked This Way Comes, House II: The Second Story, Ghoulies II, Killer Klowns from Outer Space, and The Dark Half) and the son of actor Rick Dano (Big Wednesday, Freddy’s Nightmares, Speed, etc.), so it’s no surprise that he got into acting himself. He has racked up over twenty screen credits in the last thirteen years, including playing Zeke on 77 episodes of the Disney series Zeke and Luther – and now that he has made his feature directing debut, he has brought several of his former co-stars onto the project with him. Dano stars in his film As Certain as Death, which he also scripted, alongside his Zombeavers co-star Cortney Palm, who was also in Disappearance with him and Guy Wilson, his Den Brother co-star David Lambert, and his Zeke and Luther co-star Daniel Curtis Lee, who got his own Ned’s Declassified School Survival Guide co-star Lindsey Shaw involved with the film as well. So if you’ve liked seeing these actors work with each other before, here’s another chance to see them share the screen.
As Certain as Death is a horror movie and you’ll have to be a horror fan to appreciate what happens in the final moments, but for the most part it has to be taken as a drama. The first 52 minutes of the film’s 80 minute running time are straightforward drama, with no hint of any type of horror to come. Dano’s character Richard is an alcoholic and drug addict, and his long-suffering girlfriend Kayla (Palm) has reached her breaking point with him. She stages an intervention, supported by her sister Dayna (Shaw) and their friends David (Lambert) and Jameson (Lee). It’s time for Richard to get clean or lose Kayla forever, so he agrees to head out into the wilderness with this group to a thirty acre property that’s owned by Kayla and Dayna’s father. There’s no cell reception out there, so Richard won’t be able to contact any of his dealers and will just have to detox. It’s sort of the same idea as the set-up for the 2013 version of Evil Dead… but while there is evil lurking out in the woods in this film as well, there isn’t a Book of the Dead or any demonic possession.
For 52 minutes, we watch people air their grievances about Richard and try to convince him that he needs help. And for most of this time, Richard is such an unpleasant character, it’s difficult to understand how any of them came to care about him in the first place. But thankfully, there is some interesting character work in this film, so we do gradually get to see Richard’s softer side and get the idea that there may be something of a nice guy in there, buried beneath his defensiveness and bad behavior. We also learn more about the characters around him, with comic relief Jameson especially turning out to have a more layered personality than first expected.
There’s solid dramatic writing on display on As Certain as Death, and all of the actors do strong work in their roles, with Palm providing the film with its emotional core. It’s a good thing the dramatic moments work as well as they do, because this movie has a long build-up to the horror, and if viewers aren’t able to invest in these moments they’re going to find it very difficult to keep their attention on this movie while waiting for something horrific to enter the picture. Just keep in mind: 52 minutes. There’s horror coming after 52 minutes.
Dano has been open about the fact that he has had his own struggles with drugs and alcohol (congratulations to him for being sober for several years now), and it’s clear that part of the story was very important to him. He wanted to merge the ideas of an addiction drama and a camping trip slasher movie. As Certain as Death does that, but not in the most effective way possible. It could have been structured a bit better so that the film would still be front-loaded with addiction drama but still get to the horror sooner. It takes a long time for the characters to get to their campsite, and by now we all know the point at which it becomes clear that it’s going to become a horror movie. I was left wishing that they would have made it out into the wilderness sooner so the indications of horror could start earlier. Build up the horror more, make it creepier for a longer period of time. Instead, horror just drops in toward the end of the movie.
As Certain as Death doesn’t quite reach the full potential of the concept, but I do want to take a moment to thank Dano for shooting it, for the most part, like a traditional film. Since Kayla has decided to film the intervention and the detox trip, this could have easily been done in the found footage style. But while moments are shot from the perspective of Kayla’s camera, this is not a found footage movie, and most of it is shot traditionally. I generally find found footage to be very off-putting, so As Certain as Death scores points for not going down that path.
Some horror fans may be disappointed by how short and quick the horror of the movie is, but overall As Certain as Death is a good movie with some impressive dramatic elements. I wish it had more horror to it, but it’s worth watching as it is and it gets Dano’s directing career off to an interesting start.
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