I love a horror film that subverts my expectations — the best is when, “Oh, come on, that’s so stupid!” turns into, “Ah, well-played.” Such is the case with Peacock’s 2022 original film, Sick. Admittedly, I’ve been avoiding this one despite the good reviews because quite frankly, I didn’t want to watch something with a COVID premise. I caved out of curiosity (and the short runtime helps). Two best friends Parker (played by a very game Gideon Adlon) and Miri (played by an equally game Beth Million) quarantine at a lake house in April 2020, i.e., right in the thick of COVID back when we were still disinfecting our groceries and freaking out if a stranger coughed near us. And of course, we looked sideways at people who didn’t mask up.
The film is directed by John Hyams, who did 2020’s Alone, which I feel like I’ve seen and enjoyed, and it’s written by Kevin Williamson and Katelyn Crabb (who also co-wrote with Williamson on the two most recent Scream films). I didn’t know the latter until after the fact, but it makes all the sense now. Williamson’s style of horror, as displayed most prominently with Scream and even his TV show, The Following, is quite distinctive in a good way: violent slashers among young people, and the killers are often driven by strong ideological motives of some sort, typically revenge-based.
While at the lake house, because this is a horror movie, horror happens. First, DJ Cole, a college kid, who is or is not Parker’s boyfriend (played by Dylan Sprayberry), shows up unexpectedly. Parker isn’t really having it, but it’s a nice plot device to a.) add more character depth to Parker (and the friendship she has with Miri, too) and b.) add canon fodder for the mayhem about to unfurl. What I love about the lake house is that the inside looks like a cabin design, and almost has a maze feel to it, which works well when the killer cat-and-mouse chasing occurs. There’s also the fact of the lake itself, which comes into play later in the film.
To back up, the film actually starts with a kid at the grocery store being stalked by someone through text messages. Then, when he gets back to his dorm room, he’s attacked by someone. It was a great, horrific struggle because it felt like a real struggle that two people would have. It wasn’t like the college kid was struggling with Michael Myers; he was struggling with a real human. Of course, he lost the struggle and had his throat slit, but still.
Back at the lake house, while Parker, Miri, and DJ are sleeping, a killer lurks around and steals their cell phones. Somehow, DJ becomes aware of someone in the house and alerts Parker to this fact so she can escape. DJ is able to then help Miri escape, too. DJ, like the college dude at the beginning of the film, puts up a good fight against the killer but is ultimately bested. It’s a brutal scene because Parker and Miri watch DJ exit the house bloody and the film pans down to his feet, where you think he’s got spaghetti legs the way his feet are moving, but it turns out, he’s been impaled by the killer and is being held aloft. Sick, no pun intended.
Parker and Miri are unable to escape because the vehicle’s been disabled, and the chase is on. This film is great with its cat-and-mouse chase scenes and one of the better representations of it in horror in a while. One of the best aspects of a slasher flick is the killer chasing the would-be victim and the would-be victim finding a way to narrowly escape and/or fight back, so when it’s well-done, I appreciate it.
In back-to-back shocking scenes, the latter of which is the one I’m thinking of when I talked about subversion earlier, Miri and Parker are chased back into the house and while trying to escape back out of the house, Miri is pushed to the ground in what nearly looks like a fatal fall. Parker and the killer then confront each other back in the kitchen, and … Parker bludgeons him to death! What?! I paused the film to check that we still had a good 35 minutes left or whatever the case, and when I saw we did, I was shocked. Whoa, they killed off the killer, now what? As it turns out, there was a second killer who moseys his way on in (I don’t know where he was previously, but it was still a fun reveal). The chase is back on with Parker, which leads to the lake coming into play, as she tries to escape. Great tension at the lake.
Around the 55-minute mark is when I was a little frustrated with the film. I remember thinking, Dang, you were doing so well up to this point. Miri is alive and able to crawl back into the house and as a medical student, fix up her broken leg. As she’s doing it, the first killer we thought was dead awakens and tries to attack her. She kills him rather easily, but still, c’mon! He was dead! Parker bludgeoned him too well for that fake-out. Then, that’s immediately followed by Parker running to the neighbor’s house where he threatens to shoot her with a shotgun for breaking into his house. That annoyed me, but honestly, after I thought about it, that’s realistic, but a nice subversion would have been if the stupid homeowner wasn’t immediately killed like he was by the killer.
The chase resumes with Parker making it to the highway and one-upping the killer. A car approaches and I was conflicted, vacillating between being annoyed again and thinking it was great black comedy, when the driver of the car won’t let Parker in until she puts on a mask and she’s moving so dang slowly about it. But then I had that a-ha moment I talked about earlier because the mask she’s given by the driver is laced with chloroform, i.e., there’s a third killer!
We learn that Jason (played by Marc Menchaca) and Pamela (played by Jane Adams) in a homage to Friday the 13th surely are the parents of the now-deceased killer and another son, Benji, who they think Parker sickened with COVID-19 at a party she posted about on Instagram. Benji then died from COVID. The parents do their own contact tracing and determine it was Parker and that she sickened others. Parker’s asymptomatic, but still. So, they’ve taken their revenge by trying to kill Parker, and because she should be quarantining by herself, whelp, sorry about your luck, Miri and DJ.
Because Parker and Miri are bad-asses, they are, nonetheless, able to one-up Pamela and then Jason, killing the latter with a sick impalement, and then burning Pamela alive, and thus, in another subversion, this one of the “final girl” trope, there are two final girls. I really thought Miri would be a goner.
At a sleek 83 minute runtime, with a few fun subversive moments, a timely plot, and great chase and violent horror sequences, Sick has to be considered one of the better horror outings of the last few years, as far as I’m concerned.
Milam's Musings 