While director Patrick Lussier may not be a make many people pick when asked about their all-time favourites, he generally makes films that keep me entertained (especially with the extra fun of 3D formatting). So when I started hearing good things about Play Dead, I knew that Patrick Lussier directing it meant that I would most likely agree with those who had already enjoyed it.
Bailee Madison plays Chloe, a medical student currently going through a very tough time. She and her brother have recently lost their father, the insurance company is reluctant to pay out, and they could end up losing their home. Her brother, T. J. (Anthony Turpel), ends up attempting a robbery with a friend, which leads to his friend being shot and ending up in the morgue. Unfortunately, his friend being in the morgue means that there’s also a vital piece of evidence there, the only thing tying T. J. to the crime. Making use of her medical knowledge, Chloe fakes her own death to end up in the morgue. Once she comes to, she starts to figure out how to retrieve and remove the evidence, but it doesn’t take her long to realise that she is now stuck in a building with a coroner (Jerry O’Connell) who is up to no good
Written by Simon Boyes and Adam Mason, who have been working together now for a number of years (on films I have somehow completely overlooked), this is a slice of ridiculousness that focuses on contrived tension and thrills ahead of plausibility and logic. But, and this is always a major factor to consider, the tension and thrills work so well that it makes it easier to overlook the silliness of the plotting.
The two leads help enormously. Madison is someone I have enjoyed onscreen since she first made an impact as a talented child star, and I hope, at the very least, to see her continue delivering solid performances like this one. O’Connell has had fun in a variety of roles over the past few years, but he ends up being surprisingly well-suited to the cold psychopath he gets to portray here, and is rewarded with a number of very satisfying, and darkly comedic, moments. Turpel is fine, as is Chris Lee (playing the fated friend), but the other fun moments come from Chris Butler, playing a local Sheriff, and Jorge-Luis Pallo, playing a kind of “bag man” for our killer coroner.
Although the runtime is about 106 minutes, this feels like a slick and well-paced film, with Lussier making good use of a script that scatters around just enough details before taking us quickly into the dark heart of the premise. Everything is interesting and tense enough from the start, and then O’Connell steps in at just the right time, revealing just how much of a predicament our heroine is in.
The use of one main location helps to keep us rooting for characters trying to escape a trap, the cast are all used perfectly, for their characters and the pacing of the screenplay, and this turns into an impressive example of how to make the most of fairly limited resources. I don’t want to give this too much hype, but I am struggling to think of a better non-theatrical chiller from the last few years. Some implausibility drags it down a notch or two, but I was able to push that to one side while I was watching the whole thing play out.
7/10
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