What if you got drunk in Thailand and things went… like they would if you got drunk in Thailand?
SUMMARY
Christine and Neil (Maggie Q and Luke Hemsworth) are a married couple who wake up in their hotel room on a remote island in Thailand with no memory of the previous day. After a number of odd occurrences, including failing to get off of the island as planned, the pair find a video which depicts them being drugged by a local and behaving oddly, culminating in Neil snapping Christine’s neck and burying her corpse. Uncertain of what is real and what is not, the pair must work to find out the truth and get off of the island.
END SUMMARY
I think the idea of “The Hangover, but it’s a horror movie” has been done before, but never as directly as this set-up. Anyone who has ever woken up after a black-out drunk is aware of the dawning realization that you probably did a ton of stuff which you now cannot remember and the horror at what consequences you may still have to face for the actions of what seems now to be a completely different person. Usually the stuff that you did, like in The Hangover, is likely to be more amusing, like the revelation that you asked a waitress at the Waffle House what name she stripped under in the ‘80s, but then again you might find out you yelled a series of defamatory statements or punched a priest. This film just takes this to the absurd point of finding out that your husband murdered you but you’re still somehow alive, and trying to track down the truth.
Unfortunately, the rest of the film just never really takes advantage of it the way that it should. While the film does start off by having them relatively unable to communicate with the other people on the island and having the people seem to conspire against them, both great fears to cash in on when you’re playing off of a memory lapse, they never really develop either of them properly. A big thing is that the film just isn’t that scary. If the story were more compelling, then that would be fine, but it just becomes a long, slow, slog with some supernatural hints coming up until the actual ending. Neither the score nor the cinematography really help with the scary parts of the film, if anything I think the latter actually makes everything seem safer. The film tries a bunch of traditional horror scare moments, but since they don’t fall in line with what’s actually scary about the film (waking up with no memory and a record of you doing something terrible), they all fall flat.
I will give Maggie Q credit, though, she does try to sell the hell out of the film and sometimes it almost works. She’s often conveying the exact look and feel of a person who is losing their grip on reality. Unfortunately, the lines she has to deliver with that look don’t quite match up, nor do the scenes in which she has to deliver them. Luke Hemsworth… is there. I’m sorry, I normally like him, but the character borders on the ridiculous. None of his reactions to the situation ever feel genuine, then he mostly disappears in order to get us a third act.
Overall, it’s just not a good movie. It should have been, and I hope someone will do this idea right, but this time it just didn’t work.
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