DIRECTOR Bradley Scott Sullivan WRITER Bradley Scott Sullivan STARS Indiana Adams; Kurt Cole; Madi Goff DVD 15 April
Bizarrely touted as ‘one of the best horror film debuts since The Evil Dead‘, the irksome I Didn’t Come Here to Die is anything but. Director-writer Bradley Scott Sullivan, previously only having helmed two shorts, both of which saw a number of years between — a possible lack of ideas and/or commitment, both of which are apparent here — fails to hold attention due to some mindless meandering; unforgivable in a 77-minute film. It is ironic that, had the decision been made to film I Didn’t Come Here to Die as another short as opposed to feature-length, it would likely be a fun experience. The problem here is that a mere kernel of a concept was had, that of a chain of accidental, self-inflicted deaths, and, other than these gory moments, there is nothing much of a story.
As such, the aforementioned meandering makes for a frustratingly long period of thumb-twiddling as we observe thoroughly unlikeable characters, played by terrible actors, spout an unnecessary volume of predictive dialogue in lieu of characterisation. The latter is achieved, or not, by irritatingly frequent close-up shots of the actors’ faces, whilst other poor cinematographic decisions by Sullivan — the nighttime part of the shoot clearly takes place in the day, the colours muted, badly, in post-production — do little to elevate matters. Some attempts at style with the odd segment pulled for the addition of grindhouse-style scratchiness merely serve to highlight how far from good exploitation I Didn’t Come Here to Die is. Aside from an admittedly good chainsaw death, there is little to recommend here.
