Mark Reviews Movies: DON'T TELL A SOUL

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Review by Mark Dujsik | January 14, 2021

At first, the psychology and morality—or, perhaps, the lack thereof—of the characters in Don't Tell a Soul seem sound. Writer/director Alex McAulay's movie follows a pair of teenage brothers, raised by an alcoholic, abusive, and now-dead father and a mother who is now seriously ill but, even so, who also doesn't seem to have the kind of personality that would stand up to such a man. The younger brother has taken his mother's example. The elder one has followed the model set by the father. Nothing good can come of this.

Nothing approaching any real concept of a moral "good" does in the scenario established by McAulay. When the story sticks to a simple examination of how these characters think and why they behave in the ways they do, it more or less succeeds. We watch as the older son, certain that only power and one's willingness to engage in it matter, manipulate his younger brother, who has only seen and known that power must be followed, lest it turn its attention toward you. With such a dynamic in place and a relatively significant amount of money on the line, these kids are going to either choose or go along with a fair amount of wrong-doing.

This isn't a mere character study about the relationship between two very distinct people, though. It's also and increasingly a thriller, which keeps raising the complications and stakes to the point that these characters don't seem to be reacting to the situation at hand. They start to act in ways that seem more concerned with McAulay's desire to complicate and heighten the plot as much and as many times as possible.

The brothers are Joey (Jack Dylan Grazer), who's about to turn 15, and 17-year-old Matt (Fionn Whitehead). Their mother Carol (Mena Suvari) has lung cancer, which she developed from years of her deceased husband's smoking habit. Dad didn't just die, by the way. He was shot in a fight, under unclear circumstances. There's a reason what turns out to be pretty vital information is kept from us, although it's just for one, final surprise in a movie that starts to rely on such twists a bit too heavily.

Matt has a plan to help with his mother's medical bills. A neighbor, whose house is through the woods in a nicer part of town, is having her house fumigated. There are rumors that she keeps thousands of dollars in a tin in a dresser drawer. Matt will keep look-out while Joey breaks into the house and steals the cash.

The plan goes fine, until the boys are stopped and chased by a security guard (played by Rainn Wilson). During the pursuit, the guard falls into a covered well. Joey wants to make sure the man is okay. Matt just wants to get out there. Little brother, influenced by Matt's implied and direct threats, goes along with the older one.

The initial conflict here is a pretty straightforward and clear-cut moral one. Joey returns, discovers that the man is still alive, and wants to get him help. The answer should be pretty clear: Call the cops or some other adult to free the security guard. Joey can't, though, because he fears that their robbery will be discovered or, worse, that Matt will learn what he did and make good on his threats. Joey tries to help the stranger as much as he can under the circumstances, bringing him food and giving him a one-channel radio to communicate with the kid. Matt doesn't approve.

Admittedly, some of this is a bit much to accept. There's nothing really preventing Joey from getting help for the man, especially since he can't see the kid from the well—until Matt decides to show his face in a power move.

Matt, too, is portrayed as much more than just some amoral, abusive, and unlikeable character. As his attempts to keep Joey in line and his plans to rid himself of the potential threat in the well develop, the older brother becomes akin to an irredeemably evil figure (He doesn't even use the money for his mother). The characterization works, for sure, in heightening the stakes for Joey's moral conundrum and the rationale for his inaction, but that results in a much larger problem down the line, when we're meant to sympathize with Matt when things get really out of hand.

Most of this, though, matters much less in the bigger picture as soon as McAulay adds a few new twists to this scenario. They have to do, first, with who the man in the well really is and, second, what Joey decides to do with this information. Any sense of these characters, as they've been established and in how we'd anticipate them to behave from that, dissipates.

The plotting, with all of its surprises and additional complications, takes over, and we're left with nobody with whom to sympathize or to whom to relate. For such a relatively constrained thriller, Don't Tell a Soul certainly finds many ways to strain credulity.

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