Sweetheart (2019)

Continuing on a minor “modern monster movie” kick, here’s a movie that’s maybe not trying to be funny like Psycho Goreman, but also has a practical effects creature at its core. Sweetheart is one of those recent co-productions between Blumhouse, the house that Paranormal Activity built, and Universal, which in some ways means that this is a modern Universal Monster movie—and proper horror, too, and not some bloated spectacle like that Dark Universe nonsense. It’s an efficiently-made thriller with a fairly simple concept—a lone person marooned on an island with a monster—and is at its best when director J.D. Dillard (whose only other directorial effort is Sleight from 2016) lets the idea, the actor(s), and the atmosphere speak for themselves. With a very lean cast, this is one of those movies where there is very little to no dialogue for the first forty minutes (of eighty-two), which I feel like is so praised by online film critics whenever it happens that the whole thing has really lost any outré cache, but at least it’s appropriately used here and lends a feeling of simmering loneliness to those scenes. This is a story about rolling with the punches whether you want to or not, and it just so happens that many of those punches are being thrown by a seven-foot-tall shark-man.

There is little to no backstory provided, which is not really necessary because the audience can grasp the idea of being shipwrecked without having to know where and why—all we know at first is that Jenn (Kiersey Clemmons, who would follow this up with…a voice role in Scoob! That’s the movie industry for ya’) and her friend Brad were on a boat that sank, and they made their way to small verdant island (the movie was made in Fiji, and they certainly made good use of the scenery) where Jenn discovers that Brad has been mortally wounded by a chunk of coral. She desperately tries to help him, but he ends up dying, and is then alone on the island, and all she can really do is figure out how to survive, building spears out of branches and learning how to prepare fish, with only the items she has in her intact suitcase and a bunch of mysterious leftovers she finds that were apparently left by a family that had also been trapped on that island (among those items are full glass Coca-Cola battles and a Game Boy Pocket with Game Boy Camera, one of those highly specific details I’m sure the prop crew were very proud to get in, those nerds.) Food and shelter would seemingly be her top priorities, until she first discovers a mutilated shark on the beach, and then later finds Brad’s beach-side grave dug up and his body missing. Sounds like something’s afoot! While trying to use a flare gun to catch a plane’s attention at night, she instead gets her first glimpse of the amphibious monstrosity that also skulks about that island paradise, and over subsequent nights has to figure out various ways to avoid it.

Those early, dialogue-light scenes offer a pretty engaging look at the various small frustrations and triumphs as Jenn tries to figure out deserted island life—a dispiriting attempt to turn her suitcase into a flotation device, her joy when she manages to spear a small shark in the shallows. Those feelings become even more heightened when the shark-man’s presence becomes known (that flare gun scene where you first see its silhouette standing in the water is like a Heisei Godzilla entrance moment), as then she has to spend her days trying to get another glimpse of it, to determine what it is, and then find out where she can stay at night that’s out of its reach, leading to some thriller moments hiding in a hollow log or trying to sleep in a hammock up in the trees. There’s a practical quality to these moments, with Jenn being forced to be inventive and constantly adapt even when continually reminded of the disaster that preceded it—she has been so affected by the whole thing that when she finds the hacked up torso of another one of her friends, she is able to stomach using it as bait to spy on the shark-man again. That’s probably the coldest thing she does, but at no point do you ever think she’s become a cold person—just a desperate one.

I also feel like the survival aspect is more interesting not only because the environment is so rich—it’s a really nice-looking island!—but also because at no point does it try to explain what the shark-man is or where it came from. At one point, Jenn is in the water and sees a mysterious black hole at the bottom of the sea that is clearly the shark-man’s hidey hole, but that’s about it. There are implications that the island and/or shark-man have been causing the shipwrecks to bring people there (there’s also implications that one member of the stranded family killed the others, possibly to prevent the monster from getting them), but they are simply ideas and inferences, with no definite answers. Although it’s a monster, and she describes it as such, it’s treated by the movie more like a dangerous animal with set behaviours than something more complicated, and having it just be a big rubber suit guy who wanders around helps sell the idea, with only a few moments of weightless CG (when it’s jumping in and out of the water at inhuman speeds) that mar it a bit (the shots of it swimming underwater are much better-looking.) Does anyone really care what a bear’s story is when you’re stuck in a cave with it?

The situation changes again halfway through when Jenn is reunited with her boyfriend Lucas and another friend of theirs who made it onto a lifeboat. She suddenly has people to talk to, and all she really wants to talk about is that dang shark-man and how they should get off the island ASAP to avoid further dalliances with said shark-man. The problem is that her significant other and female friend aren’t convinced that the shark-man is real, and also seem to think that sticking around on the island waiting for help is the better option than taking it to the ocean again. Conflict between non-shark-people commences, and the movie becomes about something else entirely.

I completely understand what this dynamic is going for: it is indirectly made clear by Lucas that Jenn has had some mental health issues in the past, with references to a fabricated mugging story, and so when they start hearing stories about a shark-man, they’re not going to immediately buy into what she says. It’s very clearly meant to show how people have a tendency to disbelieve women (even other women), made all the more charged because Jenn is black and her friends are white. She had been there figuring out the situation on that island for days, and she is immediately overruled as soon as the others show up, her own experiences downplayed so they could complain about all the terrible things they saw.

But these people are such condescending pricks as soon as they show up, it does come off as a bit ridiculous. After tying Jenn down because she had attempted to steal the lifeboat, her boyfriend begins ranting about how he always has to support her and how she is always miserable even when they were on vacation (he implies that she is even too negative about that nice deserted island), to which she correctly responds “this really isn’t the time for this.” Why was she ever in a relationship with this chucklehead in the first place? Piling more on, there are clues that are meant to lead us to believe that Lucas murdered their other friend (the one whose torso we met earlier), and since this is all supposed to mark them as shark-man fodder not long after they enter, it all just feels like a bit much. There is some interesting character stuff in these moments (the idea of the newcomers trying to take charge despite lacking the same knowledge as our lead), and what we learn about Jenn does colour her actions during the climax, but it almost feels like it’s going a bit overboard (hiyo) after so many more effective low-key moments.

Once Jenn is alone again, something that most people probably saw coming, it goes back to the quieter, more plaintive feeling of the early scenes, and we really feel her resignation when she silently decides she’s not getting off the island and has to have one final do-or-die battle with the monster, using her partially-destroyed journal to leave a note for any future strandees, informing them of potential shark-man peril (as the one person in the movie who actually tries to help others.) It then leads to a fight scene where Jenn is armed with every sharp thing she could find (including bones)—it’s rather clever in how blunt it is. Her final victory, which involves apparently burning at least half of the island down, manages to feel big without using any traditional Hollywood swelling music or moments (although the synth scores and slight music stings throughout the movie do feel a big cliche), and her claiming of the shark-man’s decapitated head seems like the proper way to send her off—everyone is gonna believe her with that kind of evidence.

That primal imagery applied to the survival story here really brings out the woman-against-nature aspect of the movie, which is probably the best part of it. Seeing someone have to navigate a situation like that with competence, but not without setbacks, is one of those things that still has a near-universal appeal, and making your primary obstacle something fantastical may actually better communicate that state of existence—anyone at a comfortable remove could imagine themselves in a survival scenario, conveniently ignoring the unknowable terrors at the heart of it. While the human conflict does lay it on a bit thick, the specific emotional history it gives Jenn shows us that we aren’t just following a blank slate, but someone who has had to overcome even more trauma while navigating an unbelievable situation, and she is a stronger character because of it.