‘You just keeping getting more beautiful as you get older...’
There is a place in this world for the surrealist dreamscapes of David Lynch or the labyrinthine masterpieces conjured by Alfred Hitchcock, and then there is a place for Till Death – a film in which Megan Fox is handcuffed to a dead man whilst trying to avoid being murdered by hitmen. The fact that cinema is a broad enough church to accommodate both sides of the artistic spectrum is what makes it so wonderful. Let’s dive in…
Emma (Fox) is, for some reason, married to Mark (Eoin Macken), her almost comically evil husband, a man so evil that he might as well twizzle his moustache whilst simultaneously stroking a cat. When Mark arranges a trip away for their anniversary, Emma doesn’t realise it’ll end with her husband dead whilst she is left to literally carry him around with her like the living embodiment of emotional baggage.
“Spoilers!”, you may cry. But actually, all of this takes place within the first 20 minutes and is featured prominently in the trailer. This is a film that is happy to do a lot in its skinny sub 90 minute run time. And there is some good stuff here. Fox is genuinely great throughout, once again confirming that she should have had much more successful career than she has had. Hopefully, she can corner the market on high-octane action vehicles for years to come. Sadly, the rest of the cast are forgettable, the plot veers between predictable and derivative (Gerald’s Game, anyone?) and first time director S.K. Dale doesn’t really bring anything new to the table that we haven’t seen within this genre many times before.
Till Death is one of those films that’s made for turning your brain off. A film for when you don’t want to concentrate too hard. And while there are better movies out there that do the same thing, this one is still a worthy addition to an already bulging canon of work.