Megan Fox leads this straightforward, but gleefully chaotic thriller about a woman handcuffed to the corpse of her husband.
In “Till Death,” Megan Fox plays Emma, a glamorous woman who got hitched at an age when she simply didn’t know any better. That’s partly why she’s been having an affair, though she breaks it off in an attempt to make things right.
Tough luck with that creepy hubbie of hers, Mark (Eoin Macken), an unnervingly intense figure whose romantic gestures contain an air of menace; like when he blindfolds Emma and drives her to their off-the-grid vacation home for a night of sexual bliss. The next morning, however, Emma wakes up to find herself handcuffed to Mark. And in the first of the film’s many gleefully chaotic rug-pulls, he shoots himself dead.
Sure, Emma could crush Mark’s hand and wriggle it out of the cuff, but these kinds of over-the-top horror-thrillers are best served with a heavy helping of suspended disbelief.
With a blood-splattered visage, Emma is forced to lug around her husband’s corpse as she tries to escape, which becomes all the more urgent when a hulking assassin — the same one that assaulted her years earlier — comes on the scene. Naturally, this oaf is no match for the tough-girl cool of Fox, who emerges from each bloody tussle and snowy brawl with her makeup perfectly intact: such is her legend.
In his feature directing debut, S.K. Dale orchestrates a tense cat-and-mouse game that, refreshingly, doesn’t take itself too seriously. There are no profound psychological struggles, high-concept theatrics; no groundbreaking subversions of formula. Instead, this straightforward romp focuses its attention on its cunning and no-nonsense scream queen. And what Fox lacks in dramatic prowess, she makes up for in pure, wicked magnetism.
Till Death
Rated R. Running time: 1 hour 28 minutes. In theaters and available to rent or buy on Apple TV, FandangoNow and other streaming platforms and pay TV operators.
Source: Movies - nytimes.com
