"We Need to Do Something" turns bathroom into assured nightmare

 

We Need to Do Something (2021)

You thought quarantining inside your entire house for a year was like living in a prison? Producer Sean King O’Grady makes his narrative directorial debut brewing an apocalyptic nightmare of familial collapse within a full bathroom in "We Need to Do Something." Even before being forced into a single room (let alone the place where we relieve ourselves and get ready in the morning), the central family of the film seems doomed with dysfunction. Adapted from Max Booth III’s 2020 novella by Booth himself, the film may or may not be precious with the source material, but it does ask audiences to color in what he or she thinks is happening, or rather why it's happening. There are no easy answers handed on a silver platter, and yet the journey of not knowing what will happen next allows director O’Grady to get pretty vicious and horrific.

With a thunderstorm raging and tornado warnings alerting them on their phones, a family takes cover inside their home bathroom. Tensions, however, are already brewing. Angsty punk daughter Melissa (Sierra McCormick) just wants to get in touch with her girlfriend. Her younger brother, Bobby (John James Cronin), is afraid that the house will get picked up by the tornado. Mom (Vinessa Shaw) and Dad (Pat Healy) seem to resent each other: Diane keeps receiving calls from someone (perhaps a lover) but tries keeping her kids calm, while Robert just keeps drinking himself to his heart’s content out his travel coffee mug until the storm passes. When the power goes out and Robert discovers a tree is blocking their only escape, all they can do is sit and wait. But is whatever’s happening outside more than a storm? Is it the end of the world as they know it, and is it something Melissa and her girlfriend conjured? Read the rest of the review here at Horror Obsessive.

Grade: B

IFC Midnight is releasing “We Need to Do Something” (97 min.) in select theaters and on VOD on September 3, 2021.