Megan Fox Is Beyond Brutal In Perfect, Extremely R-Rated Netflix Thriller

By Robert Scucci
| Published 8 seconds ago

Just last week I watched Gerald’s Game for the first time and was blown away by its psychological depth. The Stephen King adaptation uses a simple story in which a woman is handcuffed to a bed after her husband dies during a sexual role playing game, leaving her to face a ravenously hungry stray dog and a potential intruder waiting for the right moment to strike. 2021’s Till Death has a similar setup, but it’s a completely different movie with its own identity. I’m not framing this as a ripoff or a carbon copy because it’s anything but, but if you’re looking for a double feature on Netflix, I’d strongly recommend watching both films back to back and seeing how differently they play out.

Gerald’s Game is a near-perfect psychological thriller about trauma, trust, and identity. Till Death is a straight-up home invasion thriller that starts out completely bonkers and only continues to escalate. The handcuff setup I’m about to get into is really the only parallel the film has with Gerald’s Game, but thanks to recency bias it’s all I can think about. Gerald’s Game is heavy. Till Death, while I don’t necessarily think it’s intended to be, is way more fun than it has any right to be.

That’s One Way To Split Up …

Megan Fox is Emma Davenport, and we’re introduced to her as she breaks up with her lover, Tom (Aml Ameen). Tom is a partner at her husband Mark’s (Eoin Macken) criminal defense firm, so no matter who she’s sleeping with, it’s happening at a five-star hotel or in a vacation home. It’s a great setup because we meet our protagonist in the middle of an affair, suggesting she’s not exactly sympathetic. It just so happens that Emma and Mark are about to celebrate their 11th wedding anniversary, and Mark, who knows their marriage is on the rocks due to his own misdoings, thinks it would be a great idea to bring her to the lake house they used to enjoy during happier times.

The place is decked out with roses, romantic music, and the dark room Emma used to use for her photography business is filled with pictures of their happy marriage. It’s all very sweet until Emma wakes up the next day handcuffed to Mark, who then shoots himself in the face.

Rightfully traumatized, Emma needs to figure out how to get home, but there’s a series of problems she has to address. The first and most obvious obstacle is the fact that she’s half naked and handcuffed to her dead husband. She has to lug his corpse from room to room, floor to floor, in search of an escape. To make matters worse, Mark destroyed her phone, removed every single tool from the basement, siphoned the gas from all of the vehicles, and his entire plan in death was to make her spend her last moments in life suffering immeasurably.

Not only did Mark know about Emma’s affair with Tom, he also sent two men named Jimmy and Bobby to the house, who need access to a safe that only she knows the combination to. It’s also worth noting that Bobby just finished serving a 10-year sentence for assaulting Emma, and Mark summoned him specifically to antagonize her under these exact circumstances.

This Isn’t A Comedy, But You’ll Laugh

From this point forward in Till Death, the chase is on. Megan Fox is an absolute beast in this movie because she’s in total fight or flight mode for most of its runtime. She has the homefield advantage in the sense that she knows the lake house well. She can move around and evade capture, but that’s made all the more difficult by the fact that she’s handcuffed to Mark’s dead body and has to factor in how much of a drag, pun intended, that is. Still, she perseveres, outsmarts the bad guys, and stays one step ahead of certain death because she doesn’t want to go out like this.

I say that this movie is funny, but it’s far from a comedy. It’s dead serious and by all measures a balls to the wall thriller. But how else am I supposed to react when Emma uses Mark’s body as a sled to get from the top floor of her lake house to the bottom? It’s not funny in the slapstick sense, but it elicits laughter because that’s exactly how I’d approach the situation, and it’s also badass to watch in a “Oh no, she didn’t!” kind of way. 

It’s also worth noting that for most of this movie, Emma is absolutely drenched in blood from the inciting incident that kicks Till Death into high gear, but she’s so determined to survive that she just rolls with it.

Till Death is a brutal watch, but Megan Fox commands every single scene she’s in, making it impossible to resist her charm and charisma. Not only does she take control of a miserable situation, she looks like a total boss while doing it. Everything about this movie is wild, and if you’re looking for a thriller that’s equal parts sexy and violent, you can stream it on Netflix right now.