We Need to Do Something

Why You Should Watch We Need to Do Something: You want a reminder that the pandemic could be worse.

It's moderately diverting Halloween filler - earning points for reviving Taco's electropop cover of Puttin' on the Ritz - but still way too static to become actually entertaining.

Despite one supremely frightening moment, this movie is not scary. It just stinks.

It has a couple moments of gross-out scares, a couple of maybe-laughs, but otherwise this is a wasted effort.

Horror is often a predictable genre, but O'Grady and Booth often manage to turn left when you expect this movie to go right.

O'Grady, working from Booth's tightly knit script, gives the audience a master class in claustrophobic horror movie minimalism, preferring to focus on the four cornered family members as fear and uncertainty hobble their rational wits.

The plot itself is a cool idea but the execution was an exhaustive experience. It could be horrifying, but with some mediocre performances, that tension is completely diluted.

An insubstantial, obvious, repetitive and somewhat thin psychological horror film, but the committed performances do give it some juice.

While keeping the scope contained makes the central conflicts more heightened for these characters, it does make one yearn for exposing a more extensive narrative around them.

"Theres enough gusto in the films final third that its parallel dramatic and horrific lines finally intersect at an appropriately blunt, bleak point."