“Death of Me” Review by Anthony T

Please note, it contains minor spoilers.

Yours truly was disappointed when Spiral: From the Book of Saw was moved to 2021 due to the chaos going on. I was expecting to see another Darren Lynn Bousman film on the big screen but that didn’t happen. I’m a major fan of his work with films like Saw 2, Repo: The Genetic Opera and Mother’s Day.  Never did I think he would have another film that was slated for release this year but he does with Death of Me which I knew about only a month ago as all the hype this year has been his return to the Saw franchise.

The film is about a couple (Maggie Q, Luke Hemsworth) who take a vacation to Thailand. After night of fun, the couple are hungover. The husband discovers a camera. When he plays it, he finds out that he killed his wife. As a typhoon is heading to the island, the couple have to find out what happened the night that they got hungover. This leads them into a dark web of murder and black magic. Alex Essoe (Starry Eyes, Doctor Sleep) also co-stars in this film.

One of the main reasons why I like this a lot was Bousman’s direction. His direction was better than his last film by a mile and a half. He does a very good job making sure the scenes had that edge of your seat kind of feel to them while explore the main couple’s fight to get off the island. It happened because of the way that Bousman directs the action as they had a intense and psychological feel. It helped keep highly interested in the film. He and the special effects team also did a great job with the way that they handled the gore scenes as they came off as disturbing and hard to look at. I would explain more but I would give away a major scene in the film which I won’t do.

Going into this film, my biggest fear of this was that this was going to be like Darren Lynn Bousman’s last film “St Agatha” where I was completely bored the entire time and pleading for the film to end. Never did I sense of that with “Death of Me” as this was one of those films that
grabbed my attention from the first minute.

Bousman also did a great job in directing his cast as well as I thought he did a great job making sure that his cast had the right chemistry that was needed for this type of film. He gets very good performances from Maggie Q. Luke Hemsworth and Alex Essoe as each of them had very good chemistry with each other. Also, I liked the way that both Maggie Q and Luke Hemsworth played off of each other. They both did a very good job in getting me invested in their characters relationship as I was into the relationship and the characters as they had good chemistry especially in the beginning. Its one of those things that was needed for this to be good in order for this film to work and thankfully it worked.

The screenplay written by Ari Margolis, James Morley III and David Tish was very good. What this screenplay does very well is it got me interested right away as the opening was very effective. They did a great job in establish the two main characters and the situation that they find themselves in as it does a great job getting you set up for the film as it made me forget that their was no title frame card until it shows up until around the seventeen minute. That seventeen minutes could have also severed as a very effective short film as well. The writers also did a good job in keeping the story moving. Whether its the action or how the film focuses on Maggie Q’s character, everything is done well enough and is well paced that it made this film intense to the point that it kept me interested in story.

This is a film that redeems Darren Lynn Bousman after last year’s St Agatha disaster as I would put this up there with The Barrens  as his best psychological horror film. With very good performances from Maggie Q and Luke Hemsworth and a very entertaining and intense screenplay. I’m happy to say Death of Me will not be the death of you as you should check this film out on VOD

Four out of Five stars

Don’t forget, you can also check out my podcast Anthony T’s Horror Show here on the Dark Discussions Network. You can subscribe to my podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts and Stitcher.