Movie Review--Sweetheart

"It crawled out of the ocean and it walks on land, and it drags its food back to this . . . There's a . . . There's a black hole out there."

--Jennifer Remming, Sweetheart

One of Blumhouse's recent movies that reportedly did not even receive a wide theatrical release is actually among its best offerings of the past few years.  With a tiny cast of only four total characters, an island location found in Fiji, and a unique creature the protagonist must defend herself from, Sweetheart manages to tower above many horror movies with either a PG-13 or an R rating due to its simplicity and the absence of unnecessary subplots.  It also helps that jumpscares do not distract from the core drama of island survival and periodic fights with a nearby monster.  The quality of the main performance shines even more without such asinine trivialities.

Production Values

Establishing the pragmatic minimalism of the effects early on, the island scenery needs nothing more than the environment itself and perhaps the occasional use of practical effects to establish an authentic look.  The film's creature is realized onscreen using the aforementioned practical effects in scenes that strategically reveal more and more about its nature and abilities.  The creature's opponent, Jennifer Remming, is the main focus of the runtime.  Kiersey Clemons, who plays Iris West in Zack Snyder's Justice League, carries the majority of the movie on her shoulders as Jennifer, often without even using any dialogue.  For most of the movie, she is alone on the island.  The lack of spoken lines in these scenes gives Clemons the chance to show her great talent with physical performances.  Her character has to make the most of her isolation by utilizing the miscellaneous natural resources and a handful items left by dead island residents.

Story

Some spoilers are below.

A woman washes up on the beach of an island next to the unconscious body of her companion Brad.  She takes a flare gun from around her friend's lifevest, and, despite her skillful efforts at obtaining coconut water for him to drink, Brad dies shortly after being pulled ashore.  After she buries him, she eventually finds that his body has been dug up and dragged away, which prompts her to make a weapon.  She even finds a circular hole in sandy floor only a few hundred feet out into the ocean.  An unknown creature begins more openly stalking her at night--and it displays exceptional swiftness in water that exceeds its great speed on land.

Intellectual Content

Sweetheart is more a depiction of one woman's struggle to survive a strange animal's calculated attacks and the other difficulties of being stranded on a remote island than it is an exploration of any more deeply philosophical concept or theme.  This does not hurt the movie thanks to the excellence of the execution of the story.  When the characters or plot of a movie are handled cleverly, it can stand tall even if there is not an explicitly abstract goal in mind.  Still, stories about exotic creatures can serve as a reminder of just how impossible it is to truly know what undiscovered beings might lurk in secluded places of the world, and so the monster that presides in the underwater "black hole" near the island shore at least brings up this epistemological issue.

Conclusion

Sweetheart joins PG-13 horror movies like The Ring that make the most of atmosphere and mystery instead of inserting the cinematic blight of continual jumpscares.  In fact, there are few or no jumpscares to be found in the entire movie.  Kiersey Clemon, the creature, and her attempt to stave it off form the core pillars of the film, and they work together to reinforce that a minimal setup is all that is necessary to craft a superb horror drama.  With Clemon starring in a far bigger role in Zack Snyder's Justice League this year, the lead actress is taking more culturally visible roles, but she has already demonstrated that she can more than handle primary roles in stories that have very small casts.  Films like Sweetheart will be great options if she makes a return to them.

Content:

 1.  Violence:  The main character pulls coral out of a companion's torso in an early scene.  Not long after, the mutilated corpses of fish that wash up on the beach are shown.  Brad's body is seen wash up on shore a second time with his legs missing and with lacerations on what is left.

 2.  Profanity:  The protagonist says "shit" a handful of times.  Other characters utter variations of "fuck" much later on.