Sick (2023) – Siiiick

IMPORTANT NOTE: This piece was written during the 2023 SAG-AFTRA strike. Without the labor of the actors currently on strike, the movies being covered here wouldn’t exist.

Released: 13th Jan
Seen: 2nd November

The slightly depressing reality is that we will probably never stop having to deal with the repercussions of the pandemic, or at least not for an excruciatingly long time. The last 4 years have been an absolute shitshow in terms of physical and mental health, the toll on the system from this one illness is impossible to properly measure and will undoubtedly be a reference point that most of us use for the rest of our lives. It’s also undoubtedly going to be a major part of a ton of art that’s being made for the next decade, how could it not be? It’s a major world event that absolutely everyone in some way has been impacted by, it not only impacted what kinds of art is made and how they make it but also will keep turning up as part of the narrative for a long time. Horror has had a fairly good crack at it with Host using it mostly as a way to justify a certain filming technique but now with Sick we have a film that uses it as an intrinsic portion of the central story and it makes for a surprisingly interesting little film.

Sick takes place in 2020 just as the first lockdowns were being put in place to handle the pandemic, something that causes Parker (Gideon Adlon) and Miri (Bethlehem Million) to decide it’d be better if they quarantined together at Parker’s families holiday house, keeping them away from society while also enjoying a bit of luxury. Things seem to be going about as well as possible for the two, soon to be three when Parker’s ex-boyfriend DJ (Dylan Sprayberry) turns up but things take an inevitable turn for the worse when a man in a mask with a really big knife turns up and proceeds to start chasing the three teens around the property, stabbing at them for reasons that probably have more to do with the pandemic than anyone realises.

Sick might be one of the first films that feels like it was made to specifically touch on things that people really felt during the pandemic, a strange realism about a surreal moment in history. Strange little details like how no one could find toilet paper, how some people got a little hyper-vigilant about distancing, mask-wearing even while outdoors and even the annoying COVID parties that turned into super spreader events are all brought up in ways that feel natural. 

It shouldn’t be shocking but the guy who wrote Scream once again has his finger on the pulse of how people in this age group really behave in certain moments, capturing that sense of trying to survive in the face of something new and unknown. Even the motive for the killer feels tied directly to real feelings that people had during the pandemic, making this one of those films that feels like it could’ve only been made in this time period. I may keep praising the work of a film like Host, that film could exist without the pandemic happening but Sick feels like it only exists in this form as a direct commentary on how people felt during the unprecedented period we all are living through.

What also helps is that Sick doesn’t feel like it’s stalling for time or padding excessively, it knows that this is a film with about 3-4 characters in total that it can play around with for the majority of the film and can’t use too many locations (there’s maybe 3 scenes that aren’t set in the main house) so it sticks to what is needed, keeping everything lean and mean which means that the film moves by fast. It’s got a real energy that doesn’t let up once the killer gets into the main house and starts having a go at our main characters, it’s a brisk 83 minutes and doesn’t need a single second more which makes for an easy watch. It’s promised you a slasher set during the pandemic, it’s delivering on exactly that and nothing more.

Maybe it helps knowing that this is a film written by the guy who handled Scream but this does feel like a film with all the same positives as that film, with a couple of realistic kids who act like people you might know and who aren’t so dumb that they just go up the stairs when they should run for the front door. The two leads feel like friends and you can’t help but root for them while also seeing a little bit of yourself or people you know in them (for example, Miri is a lot stricter about covid restrictions while Parker doesn’t take them as seriously as she should). They’re well-played and just interesting enough that they make for a decent pair of leads in this film, they’re not up to the levels of a Sidney Prescott but considering what’s needed in this film they do the job just fine.

Honestly, that last sentence probably describes Sick perfectly, it does the job just fine. It’s not one of the greatest slashers, it’s not some bottom-of-the-barrel copycat that littered the landscape for most of the 2000s, it’s a solid horror film with a lot of good scares and a setting we all know far too well, a fun enough time that hopefully will only be a one-off… god help us if they have enough material for a franchise of pandemic slashers, I can’t take another lockdown, please don’t make enough material for them to do that!