Shudder Saturday: Push (2024)

I don't know how it happened, but I have now spent two weeks in a row watching films about pregnant women in peril. This time around it's Natalie (Alicia Sanz), a realtor who is at the end of a long day hosting an open house when she is approached by "the client" (Raúl Castillo). Natalie has some tragic backstory, tied to the father of her unborn child (of course), but that gets pushed aside when the film focuses on the horrible scenario of her trying to keep away from someone who seems intent on killing both her and her baby.

Co-written and co-directed by David Charbonier and Justin Douglas Powell, this is the kind of slim premise that needs a whole lot of confidence and style, or maybe even just great tension and/or gore, to make it worth your time. Sadly, it has none of those things. If these film-makers have confidence in their own abilities, it is sorely misplaced. While I wasn't a big fan of one of their previous efforts, The Boy Behind The Door, that at least had a bit more to think about, as well as a bit more visual style. This is a step down. The lean script isn't effective, the tension isn't sustained due to an inability to make viewers believe how credible the threat to our leading lady is, and the whole thing just feels flat in every way.

Sanz and Castillo aren't bad, but they're not given any opportunity to be very good either. They do what is asked of them, which means the former spends a lot of the time acting nervous and afraid while the latter stays menacing and pretty unstoppable. There's one scene that has Castillo blurting out a savage statement of intent in a way that makes you think everything is about to step up a notch, but then it's back to the standard flat level of everything else.

There's some obvious commentary here if you want to read it, but it feels unintentional, a lucky side-effect of the main premise being about a man trying to forcibly end the life of a soon-to-be mother. This could have been improved immensely by, for example, making our villain less of a mystery. Although I am all for films that don't feel the need to explain everything, and killers without obvious motivations or triggers are often the most disturbing, I think this could have been reworked to create a connection between the leads that would have given us even more, or at least a little, substance to chew on.

I feel as if I should try to praise someone, anyone else, here. I can't though. That doesn't mean that they haven't done any good work. It just wasn't good enough to make up for the disappointment of the writing and direction. 

3/10

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Netflix And Chill: The Devil Below (2021)

A near-perfect example of how not to make a creature feature, The Devil Below manages to be even worse than the first feature from this director, Chernobyl Diaries and a lot worse than almost every other movie I can think of that contains elements of this material.

The plot may be pretending to be worth you investing some time in, but it really isn’t. Ostensibly, a group looking to investigate a “lost” mining town/community believed to have disappeared into sinkholes some years ago, things start to get dangerous for everyone onscreen when some monsters start to drag people underground. Hence the title.

Written by Stefan Jaworski and Eric Scherbarth, The Devil Below at least has a half-decent creature at the heart of it. Unfortunately, you don’t really get a good look at the creature, with the decision made to blur the image and keep it only ever half-glimpsed. Outwith the creature action, the rest of the script weaves between dull and simply awful, with some of the worst scenes being unbelievable debates on ideas of science vs faith. This is obviously one point that the writers thought could be interestingly developed as things move towards the climax. It isn’t. The rest is too unoriginal, and not treated well enough, to find entertaining. Creatures using sound to hunt, locals being mean to outsiders in order to keep others safe, a third act that has one of the most obvious callbacks to an earlier moment shared between two of the main characters (seriously, if you don’t see it coming then shame on you), the only real fun here is seeing just how unengaging things can be for the entire runtime. 

Will Patton is the one star I recognised, and he is always welcome, but most of your time is spent in the company of Alicia Sanz, Adan Canto, Zach Avery, and some other people you won’t really care about. 

Although the script is at fault, director Bradley Parker should receive more of the criticism, because every decision he makes seems to work against the material (e.g. the shot choice when a creature is in frame). Parker seems to make every wrong choice possible, despite it being difficult to envision any version of this that plays out much better.

Not good, even for the most undemanding fans of creature features. I would even recommend many silly Asylum movies ahead of this one. At least they try to set out to keep boredom at bay. 

3/10

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