Sick review.
Kevin Williamson rewrote the rules in 1996 when he penned a game changer to the slasher genre. With Sick he plays by the rules of the pandemic to deliver a fast paced, violent and fun take.
New movie reviews will not contain spoilers.
Sick
Directed by John Hyams
Written by Katelyn Crabb and Kevin Williamson
Starring Marc Menchaca, Jane Adams, Gideon Adlon, Bethlehem Million and Dylan Sprayberry
Sick Review
Kevin Williamson holds an important place in the lexicon of slasher films. His screenplay for Scream reignited the genre and launched a franchise that is still going strong today. Any return to the movie type would be met with curiosity if not excitement. It’s unfortunate that we are never going to see another Wes Craven slasher movie…but with the release of Sick, we were given the first (co)writing credit on a slasher film for one of his most prominent cohorts since 2011. While Sick is unlikely to have the lasting effect of his most famous work…I’m happy to report the wait was worth it.
Near the start of the pandemic two friends head to a remote cabin to quarantine. They quickly discover that they are not alone. With a masked killer after them and a world outside that wants to keep its distance…Parker (Gideon Adlon) and Miri (Bethlehem Million) find themselves forced to fight back.
Let’s get this out of the way immediately…Sick isn’t attempting to reinvent the wheel. It isn’t trying to comment on the wheel either. The wheel in this scenario being the slasher genre. Williamson’s Scream has left such an indelible mark on his career that when a phone rings in Sick you can’t help but think “oh…here we go!” What the two movies do have in common, however, is that they are both interested in examining the precise time they exist in.
Scream was about teens who grew up watching slasher movies. Sick is about teens living through a pandemic. Aimed at young audiences…both are speaking directly to the viewer about situations they are personally familiar with. It’s one of the reason Scream works…and it’s one of the reason Sick works as well.
We recently reviewed another horror movie that was set during a pandemic. The Harbinger utilized a shared experience to make its psychological nightmare world feel horrifyingly grounded. Sick takes a different, pardon the pun, stab at using the pandemic as a backdrop for a horror movie. This is a slasher through and through…one that puts us at the start of the pandemic to make characters feel isolated and in a constant state of caution. The Harbinger attacks from the inside and leaves you with nowhere to run. Sick attacks from the outside and anywhere you run to will be met with people who are afraid of you.
We get some fantastic kills in Sick. It’s a violent movie that genre fans will have a lot of fun with. The amount of fun stuff they fit into a movie with a small cast is impressive. Once the chase/killing begins Sick maintains a high pace for a long time. I even paused once partway through the movie because it felt like it was coming to a swift conclusion…but there was plenty of time left in the movie. That’s because, after a point, Sick expands from the two girls try to escape a masked killer movie that it had been. It does so in a natural way to explain the why of it all. An escalation more than a twist.
Movies about the pandemic are an inherently tough sell. No one wants to think about it when they’re looking for an outlet for escapism. The filmmakers are also aware that their work will exist long beyond the people who lived through it. That means having to over dramatize certain aspects of the world. Everyone questions where a character’s mask is and talks about social distancing. It’s odd for viewers now because those social customs became commonplace and natural. It won’t feel that way for people watching in the future, so the need to explain what it was like is something that can be given a pass.
Sick spends a good amount of time reiterating the rules of a pandemic. Sometimes in a funny way…sometimes in a darkly serious one. But what it does best is give us an old school slasher movie dressed in a specifically modern setting. A unique setting with a personal connection to viewers today…and a historical record for an audience later. As long as that audience enjoys an intruder attempting to murder people and is a fan of fun kills…Sick is timeless.
Scare Value
Timing is everything. Sick is set in the early days of the pandemic when we were just starting to understand how bad it was going to be. That sets it as a time capsule for a very specific moment. How its messaging will be looked at the further we get from that moment remains to be seen, but the quality of the slasher movie it builds around will always work.
4/5
Sick Link
Streaming on Peacock
Sick Trailer
If you enjoyed this review of Sick, please check out our other new movie reviews
One thought on “Sick Review”