SHOOK (2021)

Studio:      Shudder
Director:    Jennifer Harrington
Writer:      Jennifer Harrington, Alesia Glidewell
Producer:  Tara L. Craig
Stars:     Daisye Tutor, Emily Goss, Nicola Posener, Octavius J. Johnson, Stephanie Simbari, Grant Rosenmeyer

Review Score:

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Summary:

A social media influencer questions if she is the target of a prank or a serial killer’s next victim when she is forced to play strange games to save the lives of her friends.

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Synopsis:     Show/Hide Spoilers

The ‘Southland Dog Killer,’ who previously killed only pets, murders online beauty influencer Genelle in the bathroom during a cosmetics promotion. In light of events, social media star Mia Larson cancels her livestream plans with friends Lani, Jade, and Santi to watch her sister Nicole’s dog Chico instead. Meanwhile, Nicole supposedly travels to San Francisco to undergo treatment for Livingston’s Disease, a hereditary brain condition that killed Nicole and Mia’s mother.

While ignoring Chico, Mia repeatedly receives unsettling texts and phone calls from Nicole’s neighbor Kellan. Using disturbing videos, Kellan reveals he kidnapped Nicole, Mia’s friends, and Chico. Kellan proves he will torture Mia’s friends if she tries to leave or call the police. Kellan forces Mia to answer questions, perform tasks, and make choices between who lives and who dies as part of a sick game. Chico seemingly dies when Mia chooses Lani over the dog. Mia also chooses Lani over Nicole.

Lani finally calls Mia and explains that everything was an elaborate prank that Lani livestreamed to Mia’s followers. Lani reveals she is in the attic, Jade and Santi are in a vacant house next door, and the real Kellan was never involved.

Mia becomes incensed by everyone’s callousness, particularly when she discovers Lani exploited footage of Nicole crying at their mother’s funeral. Her newly shaken mental state compels Mia to call her sister and apologize for abandoning Nicole to care for their dying mother alone.

Lani calls back with a warning that someone else is in the house, which Mia doesn’t believe. Someone kills Lani. Santi calls to tell Mia he is locked inside the other house. Fed up with the apparent prank and unable to find her stolen keys, Mia calls a rideshare and is paired with a driver named Big Mike.

Mia realizes it is no longer a prank when she finds Lani dead in the pool. Someone identified as Kellan texts Mia and forces her to give herself painful injections. Mia finds Santi suffocated.

Jade calls Mia. Jade claims Lani paid her and Santi a lot of money to participate in the prank. However, Kellan sends a video proving Lani was actually broke and worked at Whole Foods, and only pretended to be posh online.

Mia finds her mother’s corpse in a closet. Nicole enters the house to reveal she was behind everything all along, including the initial setup with the dog deaths. Nicole explains that she tormented Mia because she felt her sister was selfish when it came to their family, which was additionally proven by Mia ignoring the dog and choosing Lani over Nicole.

Nicole shows a video proving she smothered their mother on her deathbed. Mia tries telling Nicole that she suffers from the same mental sickness that runs in their family.

Nicole threatens to stab Jade unless Mia breaks her legs. Mia bashes one of her legs with a baseball bat and tries breaking the other by jumping over a banister. Nicole kills Jade anyway.

Nicole lies on the floor beside her sister. Nicole accuses Mia of presenting a false personality online, and says she never believed Mia would care for her like Mia once promised.

The real Kellan comes to the front door. Nicole shoots Kellan when he gets suspicious.

Mia uses the opportunity to turn the tables on her sister. While their confrontation continues livestreaming to her followers, Mia knocks Nicole unconscious. Mia limps outside and collapses on the sidewalk. Having pulled up in his car, Big Mike asks if she is Mia. Mia replies, “No.” Livestream viewers see that Nicole is still alive.

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Review:

Mia seems like a garden-variety Instagram influencer. She shills for cosmetics companies, purses Pringles lips while making peace signs, and peddles “no sh*t” beauty tips just like every other internet star who became famous for being famous.

This doesn’t mean “Shook” is a garden-variety “social media” horror movie. You know the ones that emptily parody phony personalities, feature trendy YouTube teens no one over 20 has heard of, or recycle some “no sh*t” cautionary tale about online perils? No, “Shook” has more going for it than that.

When a serial dog killer puts a high-heeled pump through the throat of one of her peers, Mia thinks twice about a preplanned livestream for her loyal followers. Instead, she dog-sits for her sister Nicole. That way, little Chico stays safe while Mia presumably does too, since the murderer apparently has it out for pets as well as faux fashionistas.

Mia’s three best friends would rather she join them for a party. Nicole’s strange neighbor Kellan would rather Mia join him. Not in person, but over the phone. After Mia receives a series of unsettling texts and calls, Kellan reveals he has Mia’s friends, Nicole, and Nicole’s dog held captive. If Mia tries to leave or call the police, Kellan will kill them all. Yet if Mia answers odd questions, performs painful tasks, and makes “Sophie’s Choice” decisions about who lives and who dies, some of them might survive. The thing is, Mia can’t be sure if she is the target of an elaborate prank, or if she really is a pawn in a serial psycho’s twisted scheme.

Jaded people probably see that summary, pick their rolled eyes up off the floor, and either move right along or go into “Shook” on bad faith that it’s another superficial slasher. To a degree, it can be. “Shook” has to bear the double-whammy of being 3,965th in a line of John Kramer “do you wanna play a game?” scenarios and the 8,763rd film to put an “is it live or is it Memorex?” mystery on top. Being a totally hollow copycat isn’t where “Shook” hangs its hat though.

“Shook” plays a lot like a Lifetime thriller, which I say solely to set the scene, not to pass any judgment one way or another. The movie has that bright look to it, and I’m not talking about lighting. It also has a vaguely tongue-in-cheek, almost playful tone, even though “Shook” isn’t quite a comedy.

“Stalked over social media” setups tend to be taxing for varied reasons, with the main one being that watching someone interact with a phone is even more annoying as “entertainment” than when someone ignores you to do it in person. Movie-of-the-week stylings can be equally grating due to the sterile sameness they usually have from being assembled by catatonic robots doing conveyor belt work.

But director Jennifer Harrington creatively sidesteps many of those conventions by trying a few novel techniques. Sometimes, Mia’s text message interactions are visualized so that the other person appears in the room with her, but the voice is distorted as a reminder they’re really somewhere else. Split screens come in at a couple of points to show simultaneous actions. Word graphics melt onto background furniture. Other fast flashes of eye-catching imagery interject here and there too. Something is almost always happening onscreen, even when plot beats plateau. The pep Harrington puts in the pace by shaking up staging like this keeps the film flowing so we aren’t stuck watching one woman typing or staring at video feeds on a two-dimensional screen. “Shook” moves smoothly as a result, which becomes a sensory-pleasing relief since there are a number of drags where Mia merely walks around, looks at cutaways of empty rooms, etc.

“Shook’s” snappiness made perfect sense when I looked at Harrington’s IMDb page and discovered the bulk of her background lies in editing. What made less sense was seeing “Shook” with only a 3.4 user rating (out of just 17 votes) as of this writing. “Shook” probably deserves a 7 strictly for technical merit, to which this movie holds a higher standard than 95% of productions in this range. Ill knock my own rating down by .5 because stubborn cynics will still find “Shook’s” twists to be too silly to look at the bigger picture of what Harrington does to jazz up the story and the style of what looks like a typical thriller.

“Shook” has a basic cable flavor, but it’s not made to be basic. This isn’t an ordinary iPhone indie affair. The film uses a Panavision camera, a Chapman dolly, and SAG actors who aren’t embodying the usual stereotypes for this sort of thing. Well, some of them are. Mia turns out to be not all that annoying anyway. Keep open-minded expectations in check and “Shook” shakes out as a breezy watch that’s worth the “free” price if you subscribe to Shudder. Regardless of whether this one tickles your particular dark fantasy fancy, Jennifer Harrington certainly knows how to cut together a crisp flick.

Review Score: 65

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