Helen’s Dead **1/2 (out of 5) If in the mood for a gory little dark comedy, this might allay your craving. The tale plays out in one arduous night (apart from a few flashbacks) at a small, rather fancy dinner party. The host (Brian Huskey) is an uptight foodie; his wife (Annabelle Dexter-Jones) is an even more uptight “influencer”. Guests include her sister, Helen (Matilda Anna Ingrid Lutz), their cousin Addie (Dylan Gelula), a jerk (Emile Hirsch) who’d been involved with both; a writer (Beth Dover) and a couple of unexpected visitors. The film opens with one of them announcing she’s just found Helen dead in another room, then brings us up to and beyond that point, with further casualties, motives and suspects in play.
Unlike most small-group-reduction flicks, this one doesn’t establish a clear protagonist. Everyone is unlikable for one or more reasons, and no one’s demise would be mourned much by viewers. There’s a lot of dialog as old and new hurts, resentments and humiliations emerge. Bodies drop periodically in a variety of gory and/or amusing ways, with the extant ones wondering who among them started the population decrease by offing their eponymous companion.
The young adult cast is mostly attractive in looks, but less so in character. Though set mainly in one house, it never gets claustrophobic because it’s a rambling ranch style with plenty of rooms for diverse arenas of action. Lack of cell service and some moments in the misty surrounding forest further tie this to the cabin-in-the-woods genre, albeit in nicer clothes.
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Director/co-writer K. Asher Levin, whose resume mostly shows him helming TV episodes and music videos, does well at maintaining pace and suspense, keeping viewers more engaged than the largely unpleasant assemblage of characters might warrant. And the actors - mostly unfamiliar to me - turn in solid performances all around. Anything further about the story or players would drift into spoiler territory. That’s a reviewing no-no on these pages.
(Helen’s Dead opens in theaters and On Demand 11/3/23)