My notes on Do Not Disturb (2022)
From writer-director John Ainslie, who scripted Jack Brooks Monster Slayer and wrote/directed The Sublet, this intimate interpersonal horror is Trouble Every Day set in a Miami hotel room. It has a slow open, establishing that married couple Chloe (Kimberly Laferriere) and Jack (Rogan Christopher) have major issues … at one point, she upbraids him for booking them into an adults-only party hotel only to be told that he’s done so because since her miscarriage she can’t look at a child without crying – though he’s also not adverse to a drink-and-drug bender and even a session with an older, clingy swinger couple (Janet Porter, Christian McKenna). While on the beach arguing, they’re alarmed by a wasted guy at the end of his tether, who offloads a lot of suspect drugs on them and then walks into the sea – Jack can’t resist sampling the goods, which he also thinks about selling, and prevails on Chloe to join him, then when she draws a line after some missing hours and mystery blood stains, doses her salsa with peyote. Eventually, the film segues from a protracted, painful domestic row into a cannibal orgy – or, at least, cannibal impulses, with much-needed time-outs from the increasingly sordid hotel room to jetski out on the calm seas to get rid of surplus limbs. It’s a pretty gruelling watch, and you might get fed up with both principles well before the horrors start – but it’s smartly-written and played, and definitely manages to be uncomfortable both in conversational and flesh-eating modes.
Here’s the FrightFest listing.
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