Sweetheart (2019 film)
[4 out of 5 humanoids from the deep]
Mao Zedong’s “On Guerilla Warfare” is a central meditation on situations where small groups of combatants use their mobility and surprise to combat more technically powerful enemies. Why start a review with a nod to a classic tactical manual? Mao perfectly highlights the only real way a human, with our lack of natural weapons or armor, could hypothetically combat an inhuman beast of the kind that populate monster movies.
Mao would like Sweetheart, and so did I.
Survival horror films are a dime a dozen, but Sweetheart proves itself something special. It tells the story of Jenn, washing ashore on a tropical island from a tragedy at sea, forced to learn to survive. She learns gradually that she isn’t alone on this ‘abandoned’ island... and she is very much in danger, forced into mortal combat verses a dangerous entity.
As a whole, the direction is top-tier. J.D. Dillard (Sleight) successfully builds strong tension over an efficient storyline–few details beyond the necessary are available, and yet you really feel for the protagonist. You watch her learn to survive, to protect herself, learn to be strategic when she seems to have no preordained skills in that direction.
Lead Kiersey Clemons is a fierce delight. She develops a strong character against a largely experiential script–lots of events, relatively little spoken dialogue. Yet she grows, is relatable, she provides a lens for the audience, and she’s a complete and entire badass. An additional strength of the film is the top-tier and original creature design–the emphasis on practical effects shows, and in certain scenes you can see the musculature shift and move in frankly incredible ways.
The film’s beautiful cinematography and tight editing really add solid tension to Jenn’s encounters with the aquatic threat, and the script as a whole finds novel ways to diversify the creature encounters–each encounter feels fresh and escalated. Overall, a tight and simple script fueled by a great central performance and fantastic creature design.
Unfortunately, the excellence of Clemons’ performances contrasts against less believable performances from other human characters. Emory Cohen is a fine actor, but his performance as Jenn’s boyfriend comparatively feels like a performance on a few occasions. He adequately portrays a character you’re supposed to hate, but it’s hard to suspend belief that you’re watching real, lived responses to the film’s events.
In short, watch Sweetheart as a smart, tight creature feature. And to be perfectly honest? Clemons’ Jenn proves herself to be one of the most flatly badass female horror protagonists Ripley or Laurie Strode–you need to see the genre’s next top-tier heroine. She finds a plan a little late, admittedly, but once the final dominoes fall it’s among the most brash and incredible plans I’ve seen on film. It’s as bold as the character, and to watch it is beautiful.
Sweetheart is available October 22nd on Digital and On Demand.
I was able to interview director/co-writer/producer J.D. Dillard, who provided considerable insight into the film’s development.
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JE: What inspired you to direct an aquatic horror film?
JDD: I was at a wedding in Virginia Beach, and found myself down on the beach with a couple of friends. There was a moment where I was looking out over moonlit water and just thought how absolutely terrifying it would be if something stood up and looked at me. I hung out in that very strange abstract fear, and when I snapped out I texted my two friends, Alex and Alex. I said ‘I know this isn't a movie yet, but creature stands up in the water, flare... Where my first movie Sleight came about in a big, full-character way, and that was my point of entry, Sweetheart actually kind of started with the shot and [we] reverse engineered [it].
JE: How did you go about the casting process?
JDD: The second I knew I wanted to make a horror movie, I knew that I wanted to make a horror movie with a black woman at the forefront because I knew that there is a remarkable deficit in that. As soon as I knew that, I wanted Kiersey. It was really important to me that this movie wasn’t ‘former-Navy-SEAL-now-Doctor washes up on shore with the perfect skills to survive the elements.’ I wanted an everywoman. I wanted someone to reveal to us what it would be like if we sort of show us and they were able to ask what it would be like if we washed up, and without it being comical. What's so remarkable about Kiersey’s innate relatability is that, when she’s struggling, it’s frustrating because that’s how we would do it but not funny because she’s bad at it.
JE: And what was the creature design like?
JDD: Neville Page designed our creature. Neville is devastatingly talented. It starts with me telling him all things I'm interested in, I have some references... things I liked, things I wanted to avoid. He walks away with all of that and comes back with eight pitches. Then it becomes the fun process of ‘I like the fin of design eight, I love the head of design three but with the ears of five...” A month later, you find yourself looking at a 3D model and it's not at all what you ever imagined it could be.’
‘Once we basically locked the creative creature and we knew we were shooting in Fiji, we started working with Weta down in New Zealand. They're the ones that actually sculpted and manufactured our creature. The last bit of that process was that the suit had to be bespoke to Andrew, he was our creature performer, and there are parts of the design that had to be adjusted based on just like real life–’the waist can’t be that thin, [etc]’ and you have to start making small compromises to make the creature actually work.”
JE: What was the hardest part filming the movie?
JDD: It’s strange how elastic the whole process is. We all have our best intentions going in to make a movie, what we think it is, and at some point you have to start listening to the movie and let it tell you what it is. That can be jarring. For me, I was in an auto accident before I delivered my Director’s Cut. The movie went dark for three [or] four months, and when I came back to it having not seen it for months I didn’t recognize it. I didn’t know why I was willing to die on this hill versus that hill, and you realize how easy it is getting caught up in what you think it’s supposed to be. Finding that objectivity is so difficult. So looking through this very trying experience of almost dying and not walking for months, I returned to the film with a simpler, clearer vision. So the hardest, scariest part was letting go of what I thought it was and [letting it] become what I now know it needed to be.
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