LUCKY (DIR. NATASHA KERMANI) - HORROR FILM REVIEW

11/5/2021

having sat and digested it overnight I think it’s even better than I first gave it credit for. It’s gutsy and unapologetic and a damned good watch.

Film Review – Lucky

Initial release: 25 November 2020 (Finland)
Director: Natasha Kermani
Writer: Brea Grant
Stars: Brea Grant, Leith M. Burke, Dhruv Uday Singh

Storyline
A suburban woman fights to be believed as she finds herself stalked by a threatening figure who returns to her house night after night. When she can't get help from those around her, she is forced to take matters into her own hands.

I suspect this film is a bit of a polarising one.

Lucky is a Shudder exclusive, directed by Natasha Kermani (Imitation Girl) and written by Brea Grant (12 Hour Shift).

Grant also stars as May, a writer whose self-help books for women mainly advocate self-reliance and independence. One night she’s roused from her bed by a noise and finds a masked man outside her house. She wakes her husband Ted (Dhruv Uday Singh) for support – and he casually tells her that it’s just “the man”. It’s the man who tries to kill her every night. He says this so matter-of-factly, as if it’s a fact of life that’s always been the case and always will be. They fend off the killer, who does a Michael Myers vanishing act, and in the morning Ted runs off in a sulk when May gets upset and asks him just what the fuck is going on.

From here May’s world becomes a terrifying ordeal of nightly assault and daily dismissal, as no one seems to take her peril seriously. The police are utterly useless, asking the same pointless questions every time she calls them and taking forever to do anything but ask about Ted, who hasn’t resurfaced. Things seem to be over when she manages to kill the intruder – but they disappear, and the next night it’s the same old story. Her assistant Evie (the excellent Yasmine Al-Bustami) and sister-in-law Sarah (Kausar Mohammed) both seem to know what’s up, everyone seems to know something, but no one will listen to her. Instead they just press home how ‘lucky’ she is, how ‘brave’ she is. Everyone is so condescending to her. Especially Ted and the male cops.

By now it should be clear what this film is about. It’s about the pervasive threat of male violence that’s ever-present in women’s lives. This message isn’t delivered in a particularly subtle way, which I think is the bit that’s going to rub some folks up the wrong way. Instead the message is rammed home again and again, like a hammer to the skull. When Ted says “It’s the man”, that’s our first indicator. Grant’s assailant is The Man. It’s the patriarchal system that sees men prey on women and that resists change and has so many of us shrugging and saying, echoes by the characters in the film, “that’s just the way life is, right?”. As messages go, it’s hard to miss and it’s bluntly delivered.

But here’s the thing – I think that’s pretty clearly Kermani and Grant’s intention. So what if the message isn’t couched in layers of carefully crafted subtext and impenetrable metaphor? Who said that has to be the way to get a message across? If you want to make absolutely sure that no one can miss the point and see your movie as just a fun sanity-bending home invasion film, then going ham is the right move. The situation is intolerable and if you have to pin a man’s eyes open Ludovico-style to make him see it, then so be it.

I should of course point out that Lucky is absolutely a fun sanity-bending home invasion slasher too. Kermani’s direction is taut and effortless, with some fantastic sequences (that entire parking garage sequence with May and her assistant Evie will stick with me for a while) and great tension. She balances the dreamlike quality of the surreal situation with the brutality of the violence extremely well. Grant is on fine form too, with May coming across as vulnerable but determined to “go it alone” as her books preach.

There are a couple of things that seem a little clunky at times, the occasional like of dialogue that feels stilted or forced. There’s a glass shard that May picks up right at the beginning and she remarks “that’ll be dangerous for someone” – a flashing neon sign that this is Chekov’s glass shard. The main cop even does the same thing to make sure we don’t forget about it. It just felt like a bum note.

On the other hand, I am a bear of little brain and it’s entirely likely that this too was intentional. Grant’s script plays with horror tropes, laying them out and then pulling the rug out from under us when we realise what’s going on. One thing that bugged me was when May turned down Sarah’s offer to have May stay the night at her place. “Get out of the house!” I cried. “Why would you stay there when he’s probably going to come back?” And then a little later, I realised. I wasn’t looking at it in the context of what the film’s about. This was me putting the onus on the victim to prevent herself from being in danger. This was me saying ‘don’t go out at night’ or ‘don’t wear revealing clothes’ or ‘don’t drink too much’.

This was me being Ted, being the cop, being everyone who tells May how lucky she is to survive instead of doing something, anything to remove the danger itself. Although I don’t think I personally had much agency in this particular situation, given that this was a regular film and not a Bandersnatch-type interactive film. But it still hit home. It still made me pause and think. That’s what Lucky should do for you. It should make you pause, and think. Not race to the keyboard to complain online about how ‘whiny’ or ‘unsubtle’ it is, or to decry ‘victim mentality’. Just think.

It’s an excellent film, and having sat and digested it overnight I think it’s even better than I first gave it credit for. It’s gutsy and unapologetic and a damned good watch.

By Sam Kurd