EVERYONE IS GOING TO DIE - Mark Reviews Movies

Everyone Is Going to Die, Saban Films

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Review by Mark Dujsik | February 20, 2025

The first act of Everyone Is Going to Die is unsettling for the right reasons. The second act is worrisome for some confusing ones, and the third is disturbing on account of the terrible implications of what happens and is revealed in writer/director Craig Tuohy's home-invasion thriller. The movie attempts to take a big swing in its themes of trauma and revenge, but it somehow smacks itself right in the face.

Until then, the movie is admirably simple, to-the-point, and filled with some dread. The story focuses on Daniel (Brad Moore), a man who's living it up in his remote, two-story house in the countryside of England. He clearly has money and spends it on all sorts of pleasures, from booze, to recreational drugs, and, presumably, women on occasion. His introduction sees him irritated with the presence of the woman currently sleeping in his bed. He forgets and doesn't seem to notice that she can't leave until he unties her from his bedpost.

That's Daniel, apparently, in a nutshell, and the rest of what we learn before the home invaders arrive only cements that initial impression. He's divorced, has a teenage daughter whom he only occasionally sees, and is determined to make a multi-million-dollar real estate deal go through with a business partner. This weekend, though, is dedicated to Daniel's daughter Imogen (Gledisa Arthur), whose 16th birthday has arrived and who's staying with her father to celebrate.

Before we learn too much about their relationship, however, Imogen spots a person standing in the garden. As Daniel tells the individual to leave and threatens to call the cops, the trespasser turns, revealing a face covered by deformed mask, fashioned after the traditional tragedy one of theater. That's when someone else, wearing a matching comedy mask, sneaks in behind Daniel and Imogen. She has a shotgun.

The two intruders, a pair of women appropriately referred to as Comedy (Jaime Winstone) and Tragedy (Chiara D'Anna), do pretty much what we expect from outset. They're not here to steal anything from Daniel, which they prove when Comedy smashes a smartwatch he offers them to leave with something of value. They're not here to kill the father or daughter, either—or, at least, not right away. Indeed, Comedy seems to have some lesson to teach the man, as she scolds him for forgetting to get his daughter a birthday cake and makes Imogen watch as the invaders dump out her father's box of toys for his sexual proclivities.

Obviously, there's some awful secret at the core of this story—something Daniel has done, something the two intruders want to bring to light, something that will surely make this guy seem much worse than just an absentee father, a cheating husband, and someone who appears to only care about women for his own pleasure. The mystery's somewhat engaging at first, because there's so much that a guy like Daniel might have done to someone in his personal or professional dealings.

The puzzle is twofold, as well, because there's also the matter of Comedy and Tragedy playing their twisted games with Daniel. What is he hiding, and will the two intruders be able to get it out of him?

The central issue, before the more significant ones of what's driving the invaders to such extremes come to light, is that there's not a single sympathetic character of note in this story. Daniel is clearly a bad man, which becomes apparent almost from the start. Comedy, the more talkative and visible (She takes off her mask almost immediately) of the two burglars, extends her physical and psychological torture beyond Daniel, forcing Imogen to watch what she does to the teenage girl's father and making jokes about coercing the two into unnatural situations and repeatedly threatening to shoot the girl.

When her more direct and definitive acts do come, it's aimed at someone who is a victim of Daniel's behavior or could become another one. There's a sudden moment of violence here that solidifies Comedy's status as a generic psychopath, whose ultimate motives and actions don't line up. Once everything is revealed, we're mainly left to wonder what point Tuohy might be trying to make about the effects of trauma—and, more pointedly, if he understands the potentially insulting and belittling insinuations behind such characterizations.

Tragedy and Imogen, the more intriguing and far more sympathetic characters of Everyone Is Going to Die, become little more than props within this tale. When the first of them is used almost as a literal prop in Comedy's last game, the movie has lost, not only its suspense, but also any genuine concern for the story it's telling.

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