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BRING THEM DOWN
While it’s not a conventional Valentine’s Day date night pick, Christopher Andrew’s directorial debut Bring Them Down offers a visually riveting and surprisingly gory revenge thriller that, if anything, might give one insight into their date’s moral compass during the after-film breakdown. For its seemingly simple plot involving two rival shepherding families in rural Ireland, Bring Them Down proves difficult to dismiss after it wraps. The film’s modern timeline occurs about 20 years after protagonist Michael O’Shea (Christopher Abbott) appears to murder his mother, Peggy (Susan Lynch) in a rage-induced car accident that scars the face of his love interest Caroline (Grace Daly, Nora-Jane Noone). Thereafter, Caroline enters a volatile marriage with neighboring shepherd Gary (Paul Ready), who blames their family’s financial woes on Michael’s father, Ray O’Shea (Colm Meaney) and believes she is having an affair with Michael. What follows is a series of desperate and brutal acts of misled vengeance through the eyes of Michael and Caroline’s son Jack (Barry Keoghan). Bring Them Down uncomfortably questions the difference between justice and revenge, and whether anyone really wins when everything on the table—heads, sheep and all—could be lost to violent and ineffective communication. As Jack says: “Where there is livestock, there is deadstock.” R. ALANNA MAYHAM. Studio One Theaters, AMC, Cinemark and Regal locations.
COMPANION
Let’s FaceTune face it: emotional support robots aren’t that far fetched anymore. Just look at what happened to trucks. They’re cyber now, and in Companion—writer/director Drew Hancock’s new sci-fi horror/thriller—our next intimate partners could be too. Tickling at the chord of fear artificial intelligence sends over the uncanny valley, Companion asks how much power the average person can handle when scientific advances outpace ethics. Robotic lovers might not be original movie storylines, but Hancock pulls out a few surprises. The twists won’t leave you dizzy, but his script feels timely. Companion’s marketing gives away that Iris (Sophie Thatcher) is a companion-bot, but wisely reveals little else. The violent, gory satire’s jokes and jumps are effective without going over the top, resulting in more of a blood rinse than outright bloodbath. Thatcher’s performance stands out, bouncing back and forth between a docile house wife to an unpredictable fembot. Accented by her supporting cast including Jack Quaid, Lukas Gage and Harvey Guillén, Thatcher’s heart and humor hints at promising scream queen potential. Companion feels like it was written as Gen Z’s Carrie or Stepford Wives with its themes of deprograming abuse and control. Without 3-D printing the wheel, Companion might surprise you, might make you think and will probably make you laugh. R. NICOLE ECKRICH. Bagdad Theater, Laurelhurst Theater, Living Room Theaters, St. Johns Twin Cinemas, AMC, Cinemark and Regal locations.
HEART EYES
Romance is dead in the holiday-themed romantic comedy slasher film Heart Eyes. Olivia Holt and Mason Gooding get confused for a couple by a lover-killer. The pair must work together over Valentine’s Day to survive in Seattle and stop the killer before becoming his next victims. Ally (Holt) is a pitch designer recovering from a recent breakup, ordered to work with Jay after a nearly career-ending ad campaign. Her boss orders her to work on a new campaign with Jay (Gooding). There’s no love lost, at first, between the conventionally attractive 20-somethings, but somehow Ally and Jay’s heavy breathing after running for their lives satisfyingly seems like it could lead to something else. Devon Sawa and Jordan Brewster round out the cast as Detectives Hobbs and Shaw, possibly Seattle’s sexiest cops. Their names are a meta reference to a Fast and Furious spin-off movie featuring Brewster, which Gooding’s character in Scream 5 references. It’s a small detail that might fly over casual moviegoers’ heads, but it remains a surprisingly intricate Easter egg for fans of the franchises. Director Josh Ruben seamlessly blends romcom and horror elements from Phillip Murphy, Michael Kennedy and Christopher Landon’s script, which fuses genres to ask “will they/won’t they” in two different ways. Holt and Gooding’s chemistry as contentious coworkers is both impressive and believable. Having the story set in the Pacific Northwest—New Zealand instead of British Columbia—was an added bonus that helped gloss over the final act’s uneven pacing. A villain based on an emoji could be lazy and forgettable, yet Heart Eyes is fiendishly clever. R. RUDY VALDEZ. Studio One Theaters, AMC, Cinemark and Regal locations.
LOVE HURTS
Ke Huy Quan’s unique career arc has been enrapturing to witness. A refugee who broke big as a child star before growing up to find Hollywood didn’t make enough room for Asian actors, Quan returned 20 years later with an Oscar-winning performance in Everything Everywhere All At Once. But sadly, Love Hurts, Quan’s first starring vehicle, is thoroughly mediocre: unambitious, underwritten and tonally confused. Marvin Gable (Quan) is a former mob hitman who left behind his life of kung-fu violence to become Milwaukee’s sunniest realtor. However, when the one person he spared (Ariana DeBose) resurfaces looking to get her life back on track, Marvin must contend with his own dark past, a team of rival killers and his kingpin brother (Daniel Wu). Love Hurts’ highlights are naturally the fight scenes, which show a clear deference to Jackie Chan and Sammo Hung’s brand of slapstick martial arts—Bruce Lee by way of Buster Keaton. Unfortunately, the film just as often takes cues from modern influences like The Raid or John Wick. That level of choreographed brutality leaves the audience wincing more often than laughing. The script doesn’t do the film any favors. The romance part of this rom-com is rushed, and attempts at dark humor fall flat. A subplot where Marvin’s jaded assistant (Lio Tipton) falls for a goon (Mustafa Shakir) is fun enough, and DeBose clearly relishes vamping as a femme fatale, but it’s not enough to offset the movie’s flaws. At 83 minutes, Love Hurts is slight enough to be inoffensive, but you’re better off waiting for a home release and crossing your fingers that Quan’s next project will be more worthy of his talents. R. MORGAN SHAUNETTE. Laurelhurst Theater, Living Room Theaters, Studio One Theaters, AMC, Cinemark and Regal locations.