Long before he oversaw two towering monsters beating the gargantuan shit out of each other on a global stage in the Godzilla/Kong movies, Adam Wingard had something of a more subtle career.
If we rewind the clock back past his unwise cracks at crafting a Blair Witch sequel or making a live action version of Death Note and even beyond the one-two hit combo of You’re Next and The Guest that cemented his name, you’ll stumble across a little, somewhat forgotten movie that bears the rather on-the-nose title of A Horrible Way To Die that helped turned the mumblecore movement into the mumblegore movement.
For those not familiar with mumblecore, it’s a type of filmmaking that relies heavily on naturalistic performances to create a highly stripped back form of realism that was greatly utilised by the likes of Joe Swanberg, Greta Gerwig and Andrew Bujalski and mumblegore also gave us the likes of Ti West’s The House Of The Devil, Patrick Brice’s Creep and the extremely potent pairing of Wingard and writer Simon Barrett.
In rural Missouri, we meet Sarah, a woman who has been struggling to get a grip on her alcoholism thanks to the traumatic experiences she had with her ex-boyfriend that still haunt her to this day. She attends meetings regularly, keeps her head down at her job and even has sparked up the first embers of what could be a new relationship with a guy named Kevin at a recent AA meeting, but memories of Garrick Turrell prove to always be within reach.
You see, Garrick was a prolific serial killer who aimed to keep his two, very different, lives as separate as he possibly can and while he was being something of a great boyfriend, he was also out slaughtering people when the urge took him. While it was Sarah herself who eventually discovered his other life and eventually got him arrested, she feels immense guilt as she believes that her drinking at the time possibly stopped her from figuring it out sooner.
However, whe she gradually gets her life back on track, Garrett manages to escape from prison and begins to make the long journey back toward his former girlfriend, pausing frequently along the way to claim more victims despite showing a curious amount of remorse for the lives he takes.
After hearing that Garrett has escaped, a terrified Sarah comes clean with Kevin about her literal psycho ex-boyfriend who suggests that they retreat back to his remote family cabin in the woods in order to lay low until Turrell is apprehended.
Now, with the tropes of a remote cabin, a searching serial killer and a couple in hiding fully in play, you may think you know where A Horrible Place To Die is heading, but trust me – all is not what it seems.
While it seems that A Horrible Place To Die’s biggest virtue is that we got the director/writer pairing that would go on to give us the superlative You’re Next and The Guest, to ignore this quiet, restrained and rather thoughtful psycho-thriller is to pass over a tight, atmospheric little package that does a lot with it’s simple premise. While the tropes of the mumblegore movement are very present (and in some cases, possibly slightly annoying to some viewers), those receptive to the brooding tone and slowly unfurling twist may find themselves utterly enraptured. Don’t be fooled, AHPTD’s pace is positively arthritic and its shocks are so deliberately underplayed that if you aren’t staring at the screen with laser-like intensity you may very well miss them. On top of this, Wingard and Barrett deliberately over complicates the plot by bouncing forward and backwards on the timeline, mixing what’s happening now with flashbacks that may fill you in on the backstory, but will also show you Garrett abducting a victim a good twenty minutes after you’ve already seen him kill them.
Simply put, this is a film you have to watch intently while characters discuss their issues with all the urgency of a casual, lunch time chat in order to keep the rules of mumblecore alive and kicking and for some, AHPTD will undoubtedly be condemned as boring.
However, tune into its wavelength and you’re onto a virtually unheard of little cracker that’s as raw as it is spiteful. Is the documentary style shaky-cam a little annoying to those prone with motion sickness, sure, a little, but lurking in among all those mumbled conversations and half ad-libbed performances is quite a grim, yet hypnotic movie about survivor’s guilt headed by Amy Seimetz’s focused performance of the emotionally wounded Sarah.
Anyone who only knows Wingard from his gleefully adolescent MonsterVerse output might be shocked at how a man who envisioned Godzilla taking a snooze in the Coliseum in Rome could be so insidiously subtle when planting dread in moribund surroundings, but the plodding, almost matter of fact nature of Garrett’s journey to be with his ex proves to be weirdly anxiety inducing.
Frequent Wingard collaborator, A.J. Bowen plays Gartett utterly straight and gives us a determined serial killer who, compared to the usual bug-eyed, overacting, obvious lunatic Hollywood is fond of dishing out, AHPTD delivers an over achieving killing machine who is as ordinary and mundane as everyone else who genuinely seems to show remorse as he racks up yet more victims while getting ever closer to his goal.
But what is his goal? Well, the sting in the tail that Wingard and Barrett delivers is something that may be rather contentious, but you certainly don’t see it coming. With a big, fat SPOILER in full effect, the twist that Kevin is an out and out Garrett groupie and has gotten close to Sarah in order for him and his two, equally maniacal, mates to get revenge on her for getting their idol caught literally delivers a pitch perfect uppercut. However, the movie takes it even further with the revelation that Garrett is one of those “nice” serial killers who, thanks to some fanboy e-mails from Kevin, is fully aware of his plan and has escaped purely to save his ex from a truly horrible death. For some, this revelation may overturn the apple cart a little, but Wingard’s mournful tone and Bowen’s grounded performance manages to carry the notion through without feeling overly convenient.
While some viewers might have an objection to the notion of a man who has spent the whole film abducting and killing terrified women to essentially reveal that it’s all been for a “good” reason, it does fit into the cold, cruel and calculating nature of mumblegore extraordinarily well.
Harsh, yet strangely haunting, A Horrible Way To Die may not be for everyone, but for those willing to embrace its particular brand of brutal slow burn may find it’s a good way to spend an evening.
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