We Need to Do Something (2021)

Score: 2.5 / 5

It's a brilliant premise. The film opens with a family entering their bathroom to take shelter. It's a large space, thankfully, for the family of four, and it's clear they're not the happiest family all together. Their phones ding repeatedly with tornado warnings, interrupting daughter Melissa (Sierra McCormick) as she worriedly tries to text her significant other. The mother Diane (Vinessa Shaw) tries to comfort the young son Bobby (John James Cronin), who seems exceptionally frightened, though we're not quite sure if he's scared of the storm or his father Robert (Pat Healy), whose aggressive and bitter jabs at the family reveal that he's not exactly a nice guy. But, within the first ten minutes of the film, the storm feels a bit more intense than it should, with a sustained white light and the sound of something like a jet crashing. Or, you know, maybe the earth opening up. We can't see anything of the outside world. Which is why it's so scary when Robert can't get the door open again.

Could a tree have fallen in front of it? Is the rest of their home still there? Who knows, because the tiled bathroom also doesn't have usable windows or an easy way to punch through the walls. It's telling that this movie was produced during the COVID-19 pandemic, because its most immediate pleasure (and horror) is that of being stuck at home with your family. Especially family with whom you have some bad history. It would work well as a psychological drama in a locked space. Some of those can be really effective, such as Hitchcock's Lifeboat or Rope, or even recent films like Locke and Buried; it's a terrifying and theatrical experience of being intimately connected with trapped people while we also feel trapped. That sounds like a pretty great movie to me. But We Need to Do Something takes a sudden, drastic turn, and while I really admire its ambition and its absolutely unpredictable plot, I wish the screenplay did a little bit more to flesh everything out.

It starts when a dog -- or, at least, what we think is a dog -- starts sniffing around by the door. The family can open it enough to get an arm through, and they try to get the dog to approach. Maybe that will alert rescuers to their location! The dog approaches and makes some noise, but then it suddenly speaks in a demonic voice (voiced, oddly and effectively, by Ozzy Osbourne), and this sudden turn to supernatural horror is nothing short of breathtaking. I was so stunned I had to pause the movie and get another drink already. Is this locked-in-the-house thriller now also a Satanic panic or Lovecraftian horror film? My suspicions and terror were further roused when a venomous snake materializes in the bathroom. 

There is no relying on "the man," as Robert quickly becomes unhinged and violent. There is no relying on the outside world, as the family has absolutely no idea what's happening. This absurdist streak manifests mostly in partially effective dialogue between the family meant to create drama, but as such it becomes often unexpectedly funny. Sometimes the humor is so dark I felt shame in chuckling, and sometimes it's so wacky that I audibly guffawed, but it's never laugh-out-loud comedy. It reminded me a bit of Sam Raimi's early work, not least because Healy's bugged-out angry/scared eyes as he loses it felt so akin to Bruce Campbell in The Evil Dead. The man of the house actually can't handle the things he's expected to handle (or, more accurately, the things he feels are his duty under pressure). 

There is some backstory, mostly shared in dreamy flashbacks about Melissa and her girlfriend, and that didn't quite work as well for me. There is some school bullying that spurs them on to witchcraft, and the suggestion might be that their retaliation on the bullies may have brought about their current situation. Apocalyptic as it feels, though, it could just be a sort of "sins of the father revisited" circumstance in which this family is being uniquely punished (think of a less festive and more paranoid Krampus). But there's just not enough of that story -- whatever it is -- to know for sure. Instead, we're left with the chilling feeling that this dark and insane story could just be a reflection of the way we all experienced the trauma of pandemic lockdown. That's where the ending is both satisfying and infuriating: we think it's about to be over finally, but more horror awaits us just outside the door.