Aside from a handful of flashbacks, the inhabitants of We Need to Do Something never leave the purple tiled walls of its single location. The horror film observes a family of four sheltering in their bathroom as tornado alarms blare outside. The single-room setting and small cast are consequences of a COVID-era production, and that effective claustrophobic horror feels all the more timely given the pandemic. The film wrings a contained pressure-cooker meltdown that unusual set-up, suffering and thriving in equal measure.
Adapting a Max Booth III novella of the same name, director Sean King O’Grady quickly establishes a volatile baseline. Teenager Melissa (Sierra McCormick) desperately checks for texts from her girlfriend Amy (Lisette Alexis), while her brother (John James Cronin) endures the storm with naive glee. The tension between mother Diane (Vinessa Shaw) and father Robert (an absolutely mad Pat Healy) is already more turbulent than the raging weather. Once a tree crashes into the house – trapping the four inside their bathroom in an unending inescapable lockdown without supplies – O’Grady allows the mental coils to unravel into unpredictable insanity. Oh, and the world might be ending too, diabolic havoc unseen but eerily implied. If there is an apocalypse unfolding, this is certainly one of the most clever perspectives the genre has seen in a long while.
Existing in the genre space between The Mist’s psychological collapse and Raimi-esque crimson-soaked mania, We Need To Do Something simmers as often as it explodes into ‘80s horror absurdity. Dysfunctional bickering becomes repetitive as the family member’s traits clash in familiar fashion: the freaking out dad, the oblivious brother, the sassy daughter and so on. O’Grady pushes that friction to the level of black comedy and then pushes beyond into more uncomfortable territory thanks to Healy‘s deranged wide-eyed performance. Yet as theatrical and seething as the drama can be, that sense of normalcy becomes an anchor once O’Grady allows the premise to start getting weird in a whirlwind of wild serves. Mentions of Cotard delusion and internet-sourced hexes push that door ever so ajar, but one truly WTF jump-scare completely recalibrates expectations for what could happen in this movie about a family trapped in a bathroom.
The build-up to that turning point can be messily structured and feel stretched thin; given its novella source, one might wonder if an extended short would’ve been more apt than this feature’s 96 minutes. But every time O’Grady commits to this swerving insanity there comes another surprising thrill. The unpredictability continues into the final act, delivering a cascade of madness, Argento lighting and unhinged performances; it’s the kind of disorienting filmmaking that makes one forget about budgetary seams and pacing weaknesses.
We Need To Do Something aims high in spite of its lower budget, smartly succeeding through that gripping dysfunctional core and a willingness to get bonkers and bloody. Come for the fraught family dynamic descending into delirium, stay for the hazy nightmare logic and maybe-infernal-maybe-mental unknown.
Photo courtesy of IFC Midnight
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