Good
golly, why didn’t they just get a nice hotel suite? Instead, Jules and Jackie
thought it would be romantic to spend their one-year anniversary at the latter’s
family hunting cabin. Alas, their two-year anniversary looks increasingly
unlikely as events spin out of control in Colin Minihan’s What Keeps You Alive (spoilery trailer here), which opens this
Friday in New York.
There
is a big game-changing twist pretty early on in the first act that would really
be shame to reveal. You might still guess it from some of the awkward phrases
that will follow, but if you haven’t ben tipped off to it, Minihan does a nice
job camouflaging it for ten or fifteen minutes. We’re not kidding here—it’s a big
one.
Regardless,
Jules the city slicker will be pushed to her limits, both physically and
emotionally. She might not be the outdoorsy type like her wife, but she has a
strong survival drive. She endures all kinds of pain and nasty injuries, but
the drama always feels completely believable in the moment.
Looking
considerably more mature than she has in prior scream queen roles (such as Extraterrestrial and It Stains the Sand Red), Brittany Allen
does arguably her career best work as Jules. Even when she is totally and
utterly freaked out, Allen shows flashes of her intelligence and resilience. Hannah
Emily Anderson also makes for a heck of a gung-ho outdoors sports enthusiast.
One
of the possible advantages of What Keep’s
hush-hush secret is that it makes it harder for the easily offended to complain,
because that would commit the mortal sin of spoiling. In any event, it is bound
to be divisive, so genre fans should see it sooner rather than later, before
the party-poopers let the cat out of the bag. Still, Minihan has a few more
surprises up his sleeve in what is a lethally effective, lean and mean
thriller, perched on the boundary of psycho-horror.
There
is no question What Keeps is alsso
Minihan’s best work since the original Grave Encounters, which he co-helmed with
Stuart Ortiz, under their Vicious Brothers moniker. It is a relentless film that
will leave even jaded genre fans shocked, but satisfied. Very highly
recommended, What Keeps You Alive opens
this Friday (8/24) in New York, at the IFC Center.
