HELEN'S DEAD - Mark Reviews Movies

Helen's Dead, Screen Media Films

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Review by Mark Dujsik | November 2, 2023

Helen's Dead takes a classic setup of a murder mystery, in which a dead body is discovered in an isolated space filled with people with various motives to have committed murder, and doesn't do much with it, unfortunately. There's one somewhat clever twist within the proceedings, although it has nothing to do with the death or the person or people responsible for it, but for the most part, co-writer/director K. Asher Levin's movie wastes too much of its potential to be effective.

It's not entirely a waste, though. There's something else going on before, during, and after the suspicions and investigation of what seems to be foul play at a remote house outside a desert town. Much of it has to do with the characters, some of whom are obvious suspects and all of whom have some sort of quirky personality that makes them terrible company—regardless of the circumstances. Levin and co-screenwriter Amy Brown Carver throw them together, let them bicker and banter and reveal just how much they're irritated by or outright despise each other, and hope that maybe some kind of fun will emerge from the clashing personalities and goals on display.

Some of that element of the story is enjoyable, although it has less to do with the drama and more to do with how committed the actors of this cast are to their roles. One almost wishes the screenwriters hadn't revolved this tale around a mystery that ultimately doesn't amount to much of one—or to much of anything at all, for that matter. It's clear they care more about the eccentricities of these characters and the uncomfortable dynamics of their various relationships, so the central conceit ends up becoming a distraction.

After establishing that the eponymous event will indeed happen at some point during the night, the movie tosses us into the middle of what seems to be the end of one of those relationships. Addie (Dylan Gelula) and Adam (Emile Hirsch) are at the local dive bar where they first met six years ago, and while she's warmly nostalgic and still hopeful about the two of them, he's preoccupied with something else.

There's a party at Addie's cousin's new home in the area that evening, but their plans to attend together are undone. After unsuccessfully trying to break up with his long-term girlfriend, Adam accidentally texts her some racy messages intended for Addie's other cousin.

There's a level of awkward energy here that's admirable, and the movie is at its best when it taps into that. We get more of it after meeting Addie's first cousin Leila (Annabelle Dexter-Jones), a famous singer who has become infamous after an "incident," and her timid doctor husband George (Brian Huskey), who seems as protective of his planned menu and the ramshackle property he has rented for the couple as he is of his wife. This party is supposed to be Leila's way of proving she's not the monster everyone thinks she is after that incident, and she's invited a popular celebrity reporter (played by Beth Dover) to serve as a witness to it.

Anyway, things go wrong, and then, more things go wrong, because the soon-to-be-dead Helen (Matilda Lutz) slept with Adam, while also inviting a community theater actor named Cameron (Oliver Cooper) who has a crush on her and the mysterious Henry (Tyrese Gibson), whom she owes money, to the party without Leila's knowledge. Levin and Carver establish so much potential conflict here that the fact of Helen's death basically deflates all of it.

It's far more intriguing to wonder how badly things at the party will go, as well as entertaining to watch these actors sink their teeth into such broadly defined roles, than to wonder who among maybe two or three of these characters might have killed Helen. A couple of facts of the plotting—mainly that it takes a while before her body is discovered, that few of the only several characters in the story couldn't have killed her or don't have a motive to do so, and that the mystery itself is resolved with relative speed—suggest the screenplay doesn't even have much investment in its own gimmick.

Why go through the charade, then? That's the more potent question to ask about Helen's Dead, and there simply isn't a good answer, except that the filmmakers seem to feel a tried and true conceit is necessary to keep us invested in this narrative. It's a miscalculation, especially since the only somewhat novel idea here is putting Henry, who brings a hatchet and a shotgun to the party, into the role of an amateur detective. There's plenty of conflict between and intrigue about these characters without a barely half-hearted murder mystery getting in the way.

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