Significant Other
2022 Directed by Robert Olsen and Dan Berk
Horror Marathon 2024 Day 14 Film 28
A woman (Maika Monroe) and her boyfriend (Jake Lacy) of six years are off to the great outdoors in the woods of the Pacific Northwest. He drones on about how she should feel fine in the woods as some means to conquer her fears via exposure. She has her doubts, but goes anyway. In the distance something has fallen deep in the heart of the woods- and we get a glimpse of tentacles eating a deer.
To add on to this he asks her to marry him while overlooking a scenic view of the ocean. Apparently her past trauma from the water and being out on a trip aren't enough for him to be considerate enough of how she's feeling so she has a panic attack and says no-- after which he lambasts her. Monroe's whisper voice tries to confront some of his allegations, but eventually she relents in telling him that she indeed loves him.
The next day she wakes up trying to find her boyfriend, wandering beside a cave where a gooey substance is. Afterwards she seems to have changed her tune- saying that she'll accept the proposal so long as they do it all over again. And this is where the film starts to go totally off the rails- and that's not necessarily the worst thing. All of the tension around the asshole boyfriend and wandering in the woods with some alien creature are replaced with a full on campy performance by Jake Lacy. So after half the film of anxiety of the unknown like 2013's Under the Skin we've now entered into the solidly absurd. *spoilers follow*
After coming out of the cave I expected that she may be the creature now- pushing the boyfriend off a cliff and acting strangely with another couple that finds her lost in the woods. Upon coming back however the boyfriend is on cartoon mode- going full out killing the other couple and then with feeling human love for the first time is unable to kill her. It's a ridiculous setup- played for laughs as the alien is bemused by how in love with her he is. This is toxic love- the awful boyfriend's traits maximized into a caricature.
This switch in tone continues through her tricking him again to being eaten by a literal shark- perhaps an in joke that the writers had indeed jumped the shark. She then runs away and uses the power of being always depressed to make the creature feel depression and sadness for the first time. Film comparisons to War of the Worlds come to mind as depression could be used as some weird superpower that humans have- depression as a means to self defense, but here it's so melodramatic as the film wants to continue to skip tonality. That said the ham-fisted performance of Jake Lacy fits well for the stupidity of the script, and I'm glad it just ends quickly on a dour note.