TIL DEATH DO US PART (2023) - Mark Reviews Movies

Til Death Do Us Part, Cinedigm

Follow on Facebook | Follow on Twitter | Become a Patron

Review by Mark Dujsik | August 3, 2023

Eventually, the most confounding plot issues with Til Death Do Us Part are clarified, but such belated explanations still leave us with a problem: This movie doesn't make much, if any, sense until some point near the end of the second act. Watching such a simple premise be made unnecessarily complicated by screenwriters Chad Law and Shane Dax Taylor keeping vital information from us points to an even larger flaw with this movie: It doesn't have much to do or say and doesn't competently do or say any of it.

The script immediately throws us into two different story threads, both of which involve the same character. She's only known as the Bride (Natalie Burn), because in the first story, which takes place in the movie's present tense, this woman is about to marry who seems to be the man of her dreams. Preparing to walk down the aisle to her awaiting Groom (Ser'Darius Blain), as he also is only known, and his groomsmen, the Bride notices a woman holding a newborn baby. That's all the introduction we receive here, and once the truth of everything that's actually happening here is revealed, even the bare-minimum details we do get from that prologue don't make much sense, either.

From there, we're thrown either backwards or forwards in time (The confusion is intentional on the part of the filmmakers, by the way, since we're told the planned honeymoon destination for the couple soon after the jump), watching the recent Bride and Groom—or the Bride-to-be and soon-to-be-Groom—in Puerto Rico. They say it's their honeymoon, which seems unlikely given what happens during the next lengthy stretch of the present-day section, and they strike up a conversation with a Husband (Jason Patric) and Wife (Nicole Arlyn), who now live there on a yacht.

Back to the present, the Bride is driving to her family's luxurious cabin in the woods, and after she dances and drinks and relaxes for a while, the Groom's Best Man (Cam Gigandet) and assorted groomsmen arrive. They're here to retrieve the Bride, who ran away before the ceremony, and as they wander around and inside the cabin, it becomes clear that they're willing to use violence in order to do so. For reasons that only become clear much later, the Bride sees these guys as a threat to her life, arms herself, and starts fighting/killing off each of them one by one.

Again, the premise is almost ridiculously simple, since it's almost exclusively an excuse for an assortment of action sequences. Here we are, though, left to wonder about the very fundamentals of the plot (How and why did the Bride abandon her own wedding?), the characters' motivations (Why are the groomsmen immediately perceived as a threat, even though the Best Man keeps saying they're not supposed to hurt her, and why would the topic of hurting her come up in the first place?), and this dual narrative.

Obviously, Law, Taylor, and director Timothy Woodward Jr. want us to ask these questions, since the mystery is the only mild piece of intrigue in this plodding and routine exercise. However, they didn't even stop to consider if the plot as it is from the jump would make a lick of sense or if the enigmatic back story is compelling enough to make such a puzzle of it. It's definitely not, by the way, and the unraveling exposition only makes the whole affair sillier than the filmmakers realize.

Basically, the plot amounts to the Bride doing a lot of running and hiding, before she does a bunch of punching, kicking, bludgeoning, and stabbing as the groomsmen find her, usually one at a time. Once the important revelations happen, even the logic behind that tactic collapses.

The action is about as bland as it sounds, with the Bride doing a lot of flashy calisthenics between blows and an almost non-stop barrage of covers of songs from the 1950s and '60s filling the soundtrack. That's because the Best Man likes to dance, which he does a lot of—while listening to loud music and not noticing that his buddies are being brutally killed within what would otherwise be earshot. Gigandet has some fun with the role, for whatever that's worth, and Burn makes for a convincing-enough action hero, even if the rest of her performance is probably hindered by the fact that her character has no other purpose in the story.

The pieces of the unnecessary puzzle of Til Death Do Us Part do come into place, but it doesn't help. Until then, we're left wondering what the point of this clichéd endeavor is, and afterward, we're left wondering if adding another layer of clichés really is the only point.

Back to Home

Buy Related Products