Don’t Look Back review – smartphone morality shocker fails to connect | Film
Tright here was one thing virtually camp about dying within the Last Vacation spot sequence, the invisible hand that toyed with us because it liquidated its characters. Franchise originator Jeffrey Reddick tries to recapture that high-concept magic in his directorial debut Don’t Look Again, additionally a few deadly pressure stalking a gaggle certain by calamity. However right here he bleaches it of humour and provides a nagging moralistic part – probably with a watch on the faith-movie market.
This time, karma is the invisible antagonist stalking six “dangerous Samaritans”, who fail to intervene – one committing the cardinal sin and whipping out his smartphone as a substitute – when an area philanthropist will get overwhelmed up on the park. However for Caitlin (Kourtney Bell) her paralysis has private causes: it triggers flashbacks to the latest house invasion by which her father was killed. Not that that excuse placates the sufferer’s brother, Lucas (Will Stout), and hostile public opinion. When one of many group makes a sudden upper-storey window exit, there appears to be some supernatural Jeremy Kyle coming to cross judgment on all of them – or so Caitlin believes.
With Don’t Look Again very a lot feeling like a ropey first draft of Last Vacation spot, Reddick’s gimmick right here is fuzzy in comparison with the franchise’s ruthless concentrate on the feasibility of outsmarting dying. In Don’t Look Again, Reddick tries to set Caitlin an identical fiendish brainteaser, rooted in serial appearances of the quantity 27, however it’s skinny gruel plot-wise. The least we are able to ask for are some virtuoso demises – however with the movie solely half-heartedly invested within the inter-group dynamics and the person stakes concerned, they’re disappointingly vanilla and unimpactful after they come. Karma, it appears, operates principally by unfortunate falls.
It’s easier for Don’t Look Again to evangelise fireplace and brimstone on the smartphone dilemma – which, when just about everybody within the digital age is responsible of voyeurism to a point, feels relatively early-2000s and un-nuanced. The directing is serviceable, however some rote imagery – particularly the ominous crow of dying – additionally likes to hit us over the pinnacle. Reddick ought to have focused on giving the characters that sort of therapy.
