Verdict
Summary
Using only the basest dynamics of the slasher movie formula and the tried-and-true Groundhog Day-style gimmick it sort of plays around, Lucky is a blazingly frustrating feminist treatise on all sorts of abstract and specific themes that never quite coalesce, and never more aggravatingly than in the final frame of the movie that suggests something so stupid that I threw in the towel as the credits came up.
Plot:
A woman finds herself facing off against a masked man every night, and even though she seemingly kills him every night, he keeps coming back, fresh as ever.
Review:
A self-help author named May (Brea Grant, who also wrote the screenplay) comes home after a meeting with her agent and she and her husband are dealing with some relatively fresh wounds in their relationship, but later that night a masked intruder comes into the house and tries to kill them. Her husband Ted (Dhruv Uday Singh) takes it all in stride as if he’s dealt with the same invader countless times, while May is stunned at the way Ted acts after they clobber the intruder and wait for the police to show up. When the cops show up, the masked man is gone, and the police take their notes and move along. But the way Ted acted nags at May, and she is stunned at his response that the man comes every night, as usual. Ted takes off for a few days, leaving May to deal with the intruder, who indeed does return, not once or twice a week, but every single night, armed and ready to kill her. By some miracle, she kills or severely wounds the stalker each time, but he magically vanishes when she turns her back, leaving nothing but his blood on the floor for the police to investigate. Little telltale signs (like small cracks around the house on windows, plates, or whatever) signal the viewer into May’s psyche, and we’re clued into the fact that she may not be in her right mind anymore. As the killer comes each night, May develops almost an immunity to his attacks, but something else is at play here …
Using only the basest dynamics of the slasher movie formula and the tried-and-true Groundhog Day-style gimmick it sort of plays around, Lucky is a blazingly frustrating feminist treatise on all sorts of abstract and specific themes that never quite coalesce, and never more aggravatingly than in the final frame of the movie that suggests something so stupid that I threw in the towel as the credits came up. The movie simply does not deliver what it wants to, and this fault lies in star Grant’s writing and the fact that she cast a slew of less than masculine actors to support her on screen. If she’d wanted to make her point resonate more, she should have cast much stronger and aggressive (at least in the acting department) male actors who give off an air of threat and strength. I enjoyed one of Grant’s previous films called Best Friends Forever, a post-apocalyptic road movie, and she’s come a long way since then, but Lucky is not progress; it’s a regression. From director Natasha Kermani.
The DVD for Lucky from RLJE is out now, and comes with a running audio commentary, plus a photo gallery.
