WE NEED TO DO SOMETHING film (2021)/ We Need to Do Something Max Booth III
"I don’t know if I’m awake or asleep or alive or dead or what[...]
it’s going to be okay it’s going to be okay it’s going to be okay it’s going to be okay it’s going to be okay it’s going to be okay it’s going to be okay it’s going to be okay it’s going to be okay it’s going to be okay it’s going to be okay it’s going to be okay it’s going to be okay it’s going to be okay it’s going to be okay it’s going to be okay it’s going to be okay it’s going to be okay it’s going to be okay it’s"
Rodzina. Tornado (?), łazienka.
Izolacja. Odosobnienie. Zamknięcie. Klaustrofobia. Osaczenie. Horror. Groza.
Jesli chodzi o film, obejrzałam z przyjemnością, choć największym jego atutem było to własnie poczucie osaczenia i powolnego szaleństwa.
Psychodeliczny horror? Może.
Nowelka jest o wiele bardziej emocjonalna i wyczuwalna, przerażająca, nieoczywista, ale niestety, dostępna tylko w oryginale, nie w Polsce.
Polecam zdecydowanie bardziej tą krótką minimalistyczną i mroczną survivalową historię o realizmie pomieszanym z surrealizmem, o przetrwaniu zmąconym opętaniem.
Degradacja ludzkiej psychiki? Owszem.
Czy stoi za tym COŚ więcej?
MOJA OCENA FILM: 6/10
POWIEŚĆ: 7/10
ZOBACZ TRAILER!
PRZECZYTAJ FRAGMENT!
Our phones won’t stop screaming, each slightly out of sync with the other, making the noises jarring and insane.
We form a line and pile into the bathroom—Mom first, hugging a rolled-up blanket to her chest; followed by Bobby with a stack of board games nearly matching his height; then me, still soaked from the storm outside, walking on autopilot while jabbing my thumbs against the weather alert on my phone; and behind me, whiskey fresh on his breath, my dad. The only thing he’s brought with him being his thermos. Nobody has to guess what’s inside it.
“Oh my god,” I say, turning off another alert. Another one immediately generates in its place. Anxiety’s threat of total annihilation increases with every additional pop-up. “Why won’t it stop?”
Dad flinches, clearly annoyed by the pitch of my voice. “Just give it a second, would you?”
Mom motions for us to clear space so she can spread the blanket out along the floor. Pink flowers and butterflies decorate the fabric. The design has always made me nauseated. Grandma—on my dad’s side—had gifted it to the family several Christmases ago. She also had always nauseated me. Yes, the way she looked and smelled didn’t help, but it didn’t end there. Her mannerisms were truly atrocious. The way she laughed could boil water. Once I heard her refer to those tiny black heads people get on their faces and necks as “n-word babies”—only, she’d actually said the word. Of course, Dad had thought that was the funniest thing in the world. Thank god for cancer.
Mom snaps her fingers until I look away from my phone. “Where were you? You should have been home by six.”
Bobby plops down on the blanket and inspects his stack of board games as if, somehow, he’d forgotten one of his favorites.
I set my phone on the sink and attempt to dry my hair off with a nearby hand towel. “I told you guys I was doing homework at Amy’s tonight.”
Mom points at my arm. “What happened there?”
“What?” I follow her gaze and realize I’d forgotten about the band-aid. Amy had slapped it on for me, just below my inner elbow. There had been a moment earlier tonight when I thought it would never stop bleeding.
“Did you hurt yourself?”
I swallow, thinking fast. “Amy’s cat scratched me. It’s no big deal.”
She waits for more. I offer nothing. “Why weren’t you answering my calls?”
“I didn’t hear it ringing.” And, for once, it’s the truth.
“You need to answer your phone when I call. That’s why we pay for it every month.”
I ignore this rerun of a lecture I’ve heard a thousand times before by retrieving my phone from the counter and cancelling the weather alert again, only for another to regenerate almost instantaneously. “I told you, I didn’t hear it ring.”
“Not good enough.”
“That’s why I pay for it,” Dad whispers, standing next to the closed bathroom door.
Mom turns to him. “What?”
The anger arrives in his eyes before it finds his lungs. “THAT’S WHY I PAY FOR IT. THAT’S WHY I PAY FOR THE PHONE.”
We flinch and stare at him, wide-eyed, waiting for the outburst to progress. Mom shakes her head, dismissing the tantrum. “You know what I meant.”
“Wow, Dad,” I say, “what’s—”
“—Mel, goddammit,” Dad says, holding up his thermos to cut me off, “when we call your phone, you answer it. No excuses. Next time, you lose it.”
“Okay,” I say, then add under my breath, “god . . . ”
Outside, thunder spooks all four of us. Bobby clutches a Monopoly box against his chest, shaking. “I think it’s an EF5.”
Mom sighs, no stranger to this game. “It’s not a tornado, baby.”
“It might be an EF5.”
Dad snarls. “What the hell is an EF5?”
Excitement replaces the terror across Bobby’s face. “It’s like when two tornados come together . . . ”—he drops the Monopoly box and claps his hands together—“ . . . and make one giant tornado . . . it rips everything in its path.” He points to the left, both arms stretched out, stiff, like he’s directing a plane to land. “If it goes this way, everything would be destroyed.” He gestures the opposite direction. “And everything this way would be destroyed, as well.”
“Oh my god,” I whisper, heart pounding as I visualize our entire town obliterated. “Is that true?”
“It isn’t a tornado,” Mom says. “It’s just a thunderstorm. Everything’s going to be okay.”
Dad groans, rubbing the space between his eyes that always seems to be the source of all his pain and frustration. “Bobby, will you stop trying to scare your sister?”
“Or it could be a fire tornado.”
I gasp, suddenly feeling flames heating my flesh. “A fire tornado?”
Mom reaches out for him, but is unsuccessful. “Bobby—”
“—Like, if you get gallons of gasoline, and you . . . ”—he mimics pouring a gasoline canister along the floor—“ . . . pour it, and if you want to be all the way over here, you can just pour it more, and you throw a match and the flame would shoot up into the tornado and that would be a fire tornado and everything would catch on fire.”
“Are you planning on starting a fire?” Dad asks, sipping from his thermos.
Bobby gives his response serious consideration, then says, “No.”
“Then there’s not going to be a fire tornado.”
Another realization strikes. “Someone else might.”
“Someone else like who?”
Bobby shrugs. “I don’t know. Just . . . you know, people.”
None of this can be real. These alerts are merely exercising caution, something the weather people have to issue or they’ll get fined or fired or something. “Mom,” I say, “is there really a tornado?”
“No, Mel,” she says, voice warm like honey, “there’s not a—”
Thunder booms, drowning out any remaining hope.
“That was loud,” I whisper, voice cracking.
Mom nods. “It was a little loud.”
“A little?”
Dad clears his throat. “Sounded like a gunshot.”
“Maybe it’s an EF6,” Bobby says, then pauses, face all screwed up. “Wait. Is there such a thing as an EF6?"
“I don’t know, Bobby,” Dad says, chuckling with exhaustion.
“Bobby,” Mom says, stern now, “there’s not going to be a tornado.”
He points at her phone. “Then why is it saying there’s going to be one?”
“It’s just in case, okay? We only have to sit here a couple more minutes. It’s almost over.”
Dad smirks into his thermos. “Most things come to an end, don’t they?”
“Oh, will you knock it off?” It’s amazing, how quickly Mom can transform from soothing parent to bitter spouse. Both of them have practiced this trick to perfection.
Bobby interrupts whatever the hell was about to happen between our parents by snapping his fingers, excited again, like a brand-new idea occurred to him. “Oh! Maybe it’s a . . . water tornado.”
“Wouldn’t that just be a hurricane?” I ask, wondering if he’d asked a doofus question on purpose—anything to extinguish the argument before it got out of hand.
“We’re too far away to get a hurricane, sweetie,” Mom says.
Despite all his fear, my brother looks disappointed by this answer. “Really?”
“Yes, baby.”
He shrugs, never defeated. “It could still be an EF5.”
“Okay,” Dad says, in no mood to hear us talk, “that’s enough, Bobby.”
“But I’m just saying—”
“I said knock it off.”
Bobby slumps his head, momentarily beaten, then starts shuffling through his board game collection again. “Can we play Exploding Kittens?”
The three of us answer in unison: “No.”
“Oh, come on! Please?”
“That game takes too long, baby,” Mom said.
“Yeah,” I add, “plus, you don’t even know how to play.”
“I do, too.”
“You can’t even read.”
“I can read!”
Dad lets out a growl behind us. It sounds inhuman. “Guys . . . ”
“Mom, tell her I can read!”
“Mel, your brother can read.”
“See? I told you.” He sticks his tongue out at me, which I respond with by flipping him off. He gasps. “Mom did you see what Mel—”
Dad slams a fist against the sink. “—ENOUGH—”
Thunder booms again, rendering us all quiet for a while.
Once, when Bobby was much younger and refusing to eat, Dad grew so frustrated he threw Bobby’s plate across the kitchen. It exploded against a cabinet, SpaghettiOs and shards of plastic flying every direction. We all sat at the table, watching him standing in front of the mess he’d created, breathing heavy, reeking of shame. The silence that followed then is similar to the one that follows now.
Mom takes several deep breaths. A fish gulping for water and only swallowing air. “Okay,” she says, “why don’t we all play Crazy Eights?”
“Not Exploding Kittens?” Bobby says, on the verge of whining again.
“Not right now, honey. But we’ll play Crazy Eights, if you want.”
“Okay . . . ”
I squeeze my fists and dig my nails into my palms until it hurts. I don’t want to play any dumb card game. I don’t want to be here in this bathroom with my family. I don’t want to be trapped here listening to them bicker every couple minutes about things that don’t matter. It’s not my fault they’re unhappy. I didn’t tell them to get married. I didn’t tell them to have children. If they hate each other so much, they should just kill themselves, do the whole world a favor.
This sucks. I need to call Amy. She hasn’t responded to any of my text messages since I got home and worry has started consuming me whole. Everything that has happened . . . we can’t let these memories exist only in our heads, otherwise we’ll go insane, we’ll lose our goddamn minds. We need to talk about what happened. We need to have a discussion.
I need to know she’s okay.
“When can we leave?” I ask, wondering what would happen if I got up and walked out. Would they try to stop me? Could they? Or would they simply allow me to disappear into the storm, swallowed up by lightning?
“Soon,” she says, zero confidence in her tone. “I bet, by the time we finish this game, the storm will be mostly done.”
“Unless the tornado picks up our house and carries it away,” Bobby says.
“Bobby, shut up,” I say, not quite believing such a thing could happen, but at this point my mental state is open to just about any possibility.
He sticks his tongue out at me again, the little bastard.
“That only happened in TheWizard of Oz,” Mom says, trying to calm us down.
“It could happen here, too.”
“God,” I say, sighing with exaggerated effect, “you are so dumb.”
Dad takes a swig from his thermos next to the sink. “Goddammit, what did I tell you about talking to your brother like that?”
“I’m sorry.”
“Are you?”
“Let’s just play this game, okay?” Mom says.
Dad considers, then shakes his head, disgusted. “I ain’t playing shit.”
“That’s fine. You don’t have to play. You do whatever you want to do. Bobby? Mel? Come on.”
“Do whatever I want?” He laughs, then keeps laughing, getting louder and louder until he has to double over, nearly spilling the contents of his thermos. “Do whatever I want. Whatever. I. Want.” He wipes snot from his face with the back of his hand. “Tell me, babe, what is it you think I want to do?”
Mom ignores him and motions for us to join her as he continues laughing.
None of us understand the joke."
***
Melissa i jej rodzina szukają schronienia przed burzą przez co znajdują się w pułapce. Okazuje się że dziewczyna i jej partnerka mogą mieć coś wspólnego z rozgrywającym się horrorem.
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A family on the verge of self-destruction finds themselves isolated in their bathroom during a tornado warning.
***
