YOU'RE KILLING ME - Mark Reviews Movies

You're Killing Me, Quiver Distribution

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Review by Mark Dujsik | April 6, 2023

The plot of You're Killing Me keeps evolving in its stakes and its level of outrage. Because of the former, it's tough not to become caught up in the latter. This is a tight little thriller that may not have a lot or anything new to say, but the film does have a point and a purpose beyond the game of its plotting.

The game itself is fairly clever in how matters escalate in a mostly grounded way. We meet Eden (McKaley Miller), a high school senior who's currently on the waitlist for the university of her dreams—the place she and her best friend Zara (Keyara Milliner), who was accepted with a full scholarship, have talked about going to since they were kids. Eden has one last plan to be accepted at the school: Ask rich and popular student Schroder (Brice Anthony Heller) to ask his congressman father to write her a letter of recommendation.

The guy evades her request at first, so Eden decides to crash a party at his family's mansion. If she can get some time alone with him and make her case, surely Schroder will be more open to the idea.

Pretty quickly, the screenplay by Walker Hare and Brad Martocello establishes that there's something else going on in the background of this story. A classmate has gone missing, and the police believe foul play is involved in her disappearance. When Eden catches Schroder's pal Gooch (Wil Deusner) being creepy with a passed-out Zara at the party, she also gets a hold of his cellphone, and on it, Eden finds a video of Schroder, Gooch, and third friend Kendra (Morgana Van Peebles) convincing that missing girl to get into a car on the day she disappeared.

Initially, the game here is one of keep-away and keep-out, as the three friends with something to hide try to retrieve the phone from Eden, who locks and barricades herself in the room. It's effective enough, particularly in how the screenplay keeps the opponents trying to think a step ahead of each other and directors Beth Hanna and Jerren Lauder stage the claustrophobic siege.

Smartly knowing this can't last too long and with more to say about the class divide and the privileges of the wealthy, the story transforms into one with more players (including Dermot Mulroney and the late Anne Heche). That section offers a moral dilemma as a matter of business negotiations for some or not one at all for our strong-willed protagonist.

While all of this and the couple new turns that follow are fairly predictable, the filmmakers' focus on the presumed power and casual cruelty of its antagonists gives the material some thematic heft and a decent amount of suspense, as well as terror in one sequence of complete helplessness. The combination makes You're Killing Me a bit more than a well-crafted game.

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