'Sick' misses its chance to feel modern
Peacock
A COVID-era home invasion thriller has so much potential—to escalate the terrifying violation of space at a time when the presence of almost anyone already feels so dangerous. It’s not hard to think of useful ways to broaden beyond a single location, either; consider how easily a killer could blend into a place where everyone is masked.
Yet “Sick” doesn’t adapt horror conventions for April 2020 so much as deliver a “Scream” knockoff where the knife still vastly takes precedence over droplets. Perhaps this isn’t surprising, as “Scream” scribe Kevin Williamson (with his first non-”Scream” screenwriting effort since 2005’s “Cursed”) co-wrote this 78-minute slasher, which is well-made but progressively deflating. And even uses the word “psychobabble,” yet another hint that parts of the script were written in 1998.
You could write the premise on a bottle of sanitizer: Parker (Gideon Adlon) and her friend Miri (Bethlehem Million) escape to Parker’s family’s massive lake house as nearly the entire country (and most of the world) goes into quarantine, and it turns out they’re not alone. Director John Hyams (“Alone”) knows how to utilize a background; for a while “Sick” gets by on figures appearing in and sliding along the edges of the frame, the silence and isolation hardly a source of comfort anymore.
But then Hyams and Williamson run out of good ideas, and it’s not long before you can feel how the concept (and eventual explanation) seems rushed and borderline senseless rather than inspired. Add in a character who absolutely should be dead and doesn’t just survive that moment but awakens like nothing happened, plus too many encounters between hunter and hunted that feel taken straight out of “Scream,” and “Sick” struggles to deliver on its supposed basis in recent, horrific events rather than just rehashing genre cliches.
There are so many ways a horror movie could capitalize—effectively or in bad taste, you decide—on the early days of COVID, defined, tragically, by confusion, fear, loneliness, and much, much worse. “Sick” is nowhere near as scary as “Contagion,” which didn’t need knives, darkness or timeliness to devastate. Or predict.
C+
ORDER “TALK ‘90S WITH ME: 23 UNPREDICTABLE CONVERSATIONS WITH STARS OF AN UNFORGETTABLE DECADE”
Matt’s new book arrived Sept. 27, 2022, and Richard Roeper raves: “Matt Pais deserves four stars for reintroducing us to many of the greatly talented but often unsung heroes of 1990s film. This is a terrific read.”
ARE YOU A “SAVED BY THE BELL” FAN?
Order “Zack Morris Lied 329 Times! Reassessing every ridiculous episode of ‘Saved by the Bell’ … with stats” (featuring interviews with 22 cast members, plus the co-founder of Saved by the Max and the creator of “Zack Morris is Trash”)
GET 100 STORIES FOR JUST $4.99