One of the overlooked gems of the year was a lean, nasty thriller starring Megan Fox
Fox does strong work in the little-seen Till Death, now on Netflix
Film Lists Megan Fox
Watch This offers movie recommendations inspired by new releases, premieres, current events, or occasionally just our inscrutable whims. This week: One more time, we’re accounting for our sins of omission and looking back on the best movies of 2021 we didn’t review.
Till Death (2021)
In today’s diminished star market, where big names will pop up in any number of direct-to-somewhere nonevent movies, it can be difficult to sort the wheat from the chaff—or, more often, the mere chaff from the active poison. So it makes sense that Till Death, a Megan Fox movie that received a small-scale theatrical release simultaneous with a bargain-priced streaming rental debut, didn’t garner much attention last summer. It’s even more understandable given that Till Death came out near-simultaneously with Midnight In The Switchgrass, Fox’s first foray into the world of skeezy low-budget thrillers where Bruce Willis skulks in a parked car for 10 minutes to collect his ill-gotten paycheck. Till Death, by contrast, is the kind of best-case scenario that gives undue hope to genre aficionados: a well-crafted, unpretentious vehicle that affords a former A-lister some B-movie glory.
The first 20 minutes or so make this description sound like a damned lie. They feature Emma (Fox) and Mark (Eoin Macken) sleepwalking through some morose and fairly unconvincing relationship drama, as textbook psychological abuse lurks beneath the strained surfaces of an anniversary celebration. Director S.K. Dale and writer Jason Carvey make a twist out of their own tedium when, following a seeming reconciliation, Emma wakes up to a grim surprise. Mark lays his controlling-psycho cards on the table by engineering a situation where his wife is handcuffed to a dead (and bloody) body; stranded in a remote and chilly location; and left with minimal clothing, no working cell phone, and a pair of vengeance-minded creeps on their way to her. A few recordings left behind confirm that Mark is more or less Jigsaw as a scorned finance bro.
With her back against the wall, and half her face neatly painted with splattered blood, Fox comes alive—with scorned determination, yes, but also weariness, frustration, and gallows humor. (“Thought you would be lighter without all that blood,” she deadpans to her corpse companion after galumphing him into a non-working car.) It’s up there with Jennifer’s Body as one of her best performances, and though Death is more of a gory thriller than a proper horror film, the two pictures share a mordant sensibility. The central metaphor—Emma dragging around the burden of a toxic relationship—may not be subtle, but Dale and Carvey don’t hammer it too hard. Fox has to recite a couple of lines about it, one clunky and one crisp, and then it’s back to the grind.
The grind includes an impressively methodical guidebook of ridiculous logistics: how to drag a body across the frozen ground without the benefit of shoes; how to strategically withhold the combination of an important safe; how to use small snowdrifts to hide just out of plain sight. Dale has a knack for camera placement, especially with overhead shots, that makes every step of these processes a clear and precise piece of geography, arranged across a sleek 83 minutes (or 90 with slow-rolling credits).
It’s easy to overhype a movie like Till Death; it’s nasty fun, not an all-time classic. Still, fans of low-rent, old-school programmers should recognize the atypical elegance of a production hailing from Millennium Media, which has forged long and mostly bad working relationships with stars like Nicolas Cage, Sylvester Stallone, Gerard Butler, and Jason Statham. Those performers were often recruited to imitate past glories. Fox never had the chance to self-brand like that; she was long handcuffed to the Transformers movies and the ingrained sexism that created her subsequent bad reputation. Till Death represents a satisfying break.
Availability: Till Death is currently streaming on Netflix. It’s also available to rent or purchase from multiple digital outlets.
25 Comments
My wife and I really liked this one. As big fans of Jennifer’s Body, it’s nice to see Megan Fox finally getting her due.
I finally watched Jennifer’s Body last week and was impressed with Fox’s performance. Diablo Cody’s writing demands a lot from an actor but MF mostly made it work. I also admired the way she portrayed the transition from one type of monster to another without ever becoming totally unsympathetic.I’ll check out Till Death.
Diablo Cody’s writing demands a lot from an actor but MF mostly made it workIt also demanded a lot from my patience. And you will never convince me that she didn’t start with Amanda Seyfried’s character being called Needy and work her way back to the name Anita, which really doesn’t fit the character’s age.Yes, I need to take a deep breath and go outside, but that’s beside the point.
Yeah, she’s a bit like Kristen Stewart in that everybody thought she was a bad actress because she was in crappy movies. But it turns out if they are actually given decent material, they aren’t so bad.
Though you could argue that all those crappy roles let them get the experience needed to become good actresses too. Stewart definitely had the whole problem with the affair mess from Snow White and the Huntsman.
I mean, Jennifer’s Body was okay, but it seemed clear to me that a lot of Fox’s early career focused more on her looks than her acting ability. In the Transformers films but the only thing Bay seemed to actually care about was having a ‘hot girl’ as the female lead and fangasming over the military. After those and the Ninja Turtles roles, it was just typecasting.
Though I will say the other film I saw Fox in this year, Rogue, was pretty mediocre overall, though she wasn’t the worst part of it.
Its so refreshing to see feminist narratives about how horribly women stars are treated, largely ignored during Fox’s time or Britney’s time, slightly getting more mainstream attention. Every bit of her was badly criticized from the tiniest parts of her appearance to the lines she was given, which she had no control over. How Michael Bay shot her, posed her, dressed her, and made her speak is on him, but of course, she got the brunt of that criticism for “reasons.” Now it feels like there’s more of a chance for her to just be an actor and be judged accordingly for her acting as opposed to what stand-up comedians, morning DJs, and late night hosts judged and mocked her for.
Her work on New Girl was pretty good. Currently on season 6 part of a full run re-watch (it’s still a damn good show), and her performance really worked for us.
It was well-made and I’d be interested to see more work from the director, although I must say that the screenplay really went out of its way remind of a movie with a similar yet much more intriguing premise, Gerald’s Game, which put a bit of a damper on my enjoyment of an otherwise fine, suspenseful thriller. Fox’s performance was indeed gripping. She’s always been a talented actor, of course.
went out of its way to remind me of a movieJesus, Old Man Schultz, proofread much?!
Well, if you’re applying for a position at the AV Club, the first thing you need to learn is that you don’t go back to correct your mistakes…
I liked this because it was one step ahead of the audience(or reddit) usually in the “why doesn’t she just do this”, and then whatever you were thinking she’s thought of. And although it was a clunky start, once the tone shifted to something more darkly humorous when the hubby dies, Fox really made it work.
Spoilers!
I rarely have the patience for realistic gore, but Netflix reminded me to maybe watch this after seeing her bit part in this fall’s weird chauffeuring-vampires-around movie with a name I can’t recall.
Starring in the big budget films sometimes really doesn’t do some actors any favours. Both Fox and Kristen Stewart have shown that when asked they can perform as well as any other great actor out there. But none of these “blockbuster” films ever asked them to do anything other than stand there and look pretty for the camera.
I mean, I like cranberry sauce, but obviously not as much as Megan Fox likes cranberry sauce.
What the heck is an “Eoin”?
An incredibly common Scottish first name. God, you’re stupid.
And you’re recognitions, the useless twat of the internet. Stick your head back up your asshole where you’re comfy.
They were wrong anyway, it’s an Irish name…
what ya gonna do?
Bit awkward of you to call someone stupid when it’s actually an Irish name. It has a Scottish Gaelic equivalent spelling, but you would not call it a Scottish name. So maybe make sure you are correct before calling someone out?…
so is she tilling up soil? is her name (Hepsibeh?) Till? why isn’t it ‘Til Death (or ‘til Death)?
I caught that too, but I was thinking…
Till turns out to be a valid synonym of until, and it actually debuted in the language earlier. I think ‘til is a back-formation. Merriam-Webster’s got an article about it, which I would include if Kinja didn’t suck at links.
Man is art subjective – I thought this was fun and shockingly well-shot, but I thought Fox (and the acting in general) was pretty bad. I’ve liked her before, but she’s just so laconic in this, no matter what happens to her. I’m surprised she’s getting so much (relative) praise for this performance. And the script’s pretty awful too – really it just felt like a demo reel for the director and cinematographer who elevated some pretty crap material. Although the director should get blame for a bunch of the shitty performances imo.