thehorrorsofhorror

[thehorrorsofhorror]

Shook (2021)

I've just purchased a Shudder subscription for the first time, and so I decided to kick it off with a Shudder original, Shook (2021) I had the highest of hopes despite the reviews, because there's nothing I love more than watching a social media influencer get their shit rocked, but DANG. This movie dragged for the first bit, I got 30 minutes in before I literally had to start writing down my thoughts while trying not to fall asleep. First few shots, cool! Really cheesy, but cool. I like the stills of the girl with the heel through her face, original- and I will be making that into an art piece shortly.

However, anything that's happened since the literal first frames has been so hard to pay attention to whatsoever. I guess the setup is that this killer has something against dogs, and so that's their main target, pet owners. We're watching the main character Mia home alone at her (bestfriends?) house dog sitting, we sit through multiple minutes of her scrolling her social media before she starts being harassed on the phone by our villain, Kellan (her boyfriend). This persons taunting her on the phone after stealing the dog, Chico. (If someone stole my big dumbass of a dog I'd be throwing hands instantly). After the premise of the film is introduced is where I had my first real problem with it, Mia calls the police because of the situation going on where she's met by an automated voice message saying: "Please stay on the line, you have reached the 911 call center, your call will be answered as soon as possible." THE 911 CALL CENTER? In what situation ever have you called an emergency line and been placed on hold? The literal only thing that could've improved this scene is if they'd given her some smooth jazz to listen to while she waited. Big scary phone boyfriend then tells her to hang up as soon as the police are finished jerking off, and then sets her up with a set of rules about not screaming or asking for help. He tells her that her dog sitting skills are subpar, and scolds her for her crippling millennial phone addiction. Then we're met with our first moral dilemma, who dies.. Lani or Chico? (Followed by this brilliant still)

Personally, I'd pick Chico to live.

"It's a simple question, your sick sisters dog, or the girl trying to sleep with your boyfriend." OOHH GETTEM. She picks to kill Chico, which is absurd, but we'll move on.

I can't contain myself when new age horror movies use phones as flashlights, this generation of horror movies has been replaced with an entirely new flavor of Idiocracy. (I'm hoping for the phone to die)

Now we're on to the next choice but our buddy Kellan gives her the chance to answer three questions, and if she gets them right- she doesn't have to make a choice and if not, somebody dies. Pretty fair! Off the bat, the first question is "what song has the rhythm for CPR" and Mia immediately tries to go to google on her presumably hacked phone, where the killers like "nuh-uh". (I guess no one is... Stayin' Alive) She then runs into the other room where she starts searching on her laptop, and the killer sends a video of her friend suffocating inside of a bag and hits her with Hey, CPR might help here. Lmao. What particularly stood out to me in this scene though, what I HAVE to mention is that not only does Mia not know this basic information, but she also does not known how to use a search engine. She didn't search, "What songs can you do CPR to?" she just searches "CPR" and is scrolling endlessly through multiple articles, that are of course not focused on what she's actually looking for.. before she finally finds it and yells out the answer in her final desperate seconds. The next question is "What temperature is considered a fever" and again, Mia is in desperation mode because she has no idea. My favorite part about this film so far is the killers absolute faith in Mia being an idiot. She desperately digs through her belongings in the bathroom before finding a thermometer and getting the answer last minute. The final question is where it gets interesting (Yippieee) "What were your mothers last words?" and GASP, how does my boyfriend know what they were?! Kellan teases at the fact that he was there to hear them, and I guess Mia wasn't around for the end of her mothers life. He then points out to her that for the last two weeks of her life, she was on a ventilator and unable to speak, so her final words would've been weeks prior, and Mia still didn't know. She's then forced to choose between her best friends, and one of them ends up dying. Lani then video calls her like "Hey girl omg we got you soooo good that was all a joke! We're all up in the attic, lol!" or some dialogue I really tried to listen to.. I guess Kellan was never the person on the other end of the phone it was Lani using a voice changer. What the fuck are these friends, Mia? Move on. This was all live streamed by "po$hgirLani" and as you can see, not for much:

Who made this movie and how old are they?

It is incredibly hard to keep up but after minutes of crying, she's on the phone with her sister, Nicole asks for pictures of Chico and then points out that she's watched the super successful live stream and is aware of ALLLLL the people in her house. Mia's pissed, because she should be, and demands the whereabouts of our little man Chico. Suddenly, the tone changes and all her friends on the phone are like hey get the fuck out of here and because of the prior gaslighting, Mia doesn't believe them even after this super cool visual scene we get

Wow this is a cool thing to do artistically in your movie!

Couldn't agree more.

And our super compelling plottwist... the bad friends were TOLD to do this to protect Mia from physical harm. (That's why Lani was taunting her happily and posting it on social media) Something splashes in the pool and we find ourselves with a Dead Lani, and honestly... I ain't mad. Round three commences, same rules as before. Mia grabs the knife to protect herself and starts hearing a voice (which I guess is just the texts read out loud) telling her to put the knife down and go into the living room. You see this voice as someone physically beside her, and then she discovers that the fire alarm has a camera they've been watching through. AND HOLY FUCK LET'S TAKE A LOOK AT THIS

AND TALK ABOUT THE ABSOLUTE WET NOISE THEY FELT THEY HAD TO ADD IN THIS SCENE.

Mia goes out to the living room where she finds a box of needles and is told to inject herself with all of them or Santi dies. (I really cannot keep up with these bitches, I'm sorry) Honestly though, this part felt unique and exciting, and credit where credit is due- this whole movies implied Mia's selfishness however she jammed them bitches right in there while the text timer counted down the SECONDS of the minute. She's running out of time and jams four of them into her leg at once and ADMITTEDLY I did a big cringe, this happens again with two more. Mia gets up and starts absolutely beating down the fucking door to get to Santi which is admirable after like 12 injections into her body.. then she finds all of her friends dead, I think? She gets a call from Jade who starts apologizing profusely and comes out with "Sorry, it was just a LOT of money." I guess Lani and Jade teamed up and got some serious bank off of psychologically abusing their friend Mia, but it's OKAY because they intended to share the money with her. I literally knew there was a reason I hated Lani this entire time even after it implied she was innocent, but to be fair Chico is probably the only character I like. Oh my god, it then shows a video of Lani being caught working at Whole Foods, and then depression crying because she likes to appear to have a lot of money and Nobody would follow a poor person.

An actual photo of my face watching this

Mia is going through the dark on a search for our boy Kellan, using her phone flashlight... (the battery did not die :c) She finds a closet and opens it, while holding up her defensive manicure scissors and this lil guy pops out

She moves on and finds a laptop with cameras on every part of the house, there she sees Nicole (her sister.. keep up) She calls her, I guess Nicole killed their mom (Just a fun little tidbit, it took me until this exact moment in the movie to realize they were sisters, because that's how little I could pay attention) because she was sick anyway. Nicole points out "Hey, you picked Lani over me." She tells her how it originally was supposed to be a game/joke but then she went through with it because lol fuck it, and how the moment she knew she couldn't trust her is when she lied about Chico.

"Covering up for your friends... I couldn't take it." Okay, we get it Nicole.. We don't like Mia, she is a bad sister. Oh SHIT, the sister is sick too and is mad that she didn't care for both the mother and her despite Mia not even having the knowledge that her sister is sick. OK. Nicole says that Mia has to break her leg in 5 minutes or less or Jade dies, I admire Nicoles creativity with these scenarios. She is one of the more creative horror villains imo. Nicole goes on MORE about Mia's abandonment to the family, then the video cuts to her with Jade and she's giving her some little stabbies in the leg. I guess Nicole can teleport also because I don't know how she went from the foyer to the living room with a hostage, but I digress. Mia is in a desperate attempt to break her own leg, she's got a baseball bat wailing on it, while simultaneously texting an uber driver that showed up to leave so her sister doesn't kill her friends, but Big Mike is having none of it.

oh boy

She continues beating the shit out of herself until she breaks a leg successfully, and then Nicole is all like I said legs not leg lol fuckin' nerd. (or something like that) so done with all of this, Mia hurls herself over the stairs railing to finish the job.. Go Mia! She's crying and screaming big when Nicole comes in and reassures her that Jade is in fact not okay and she has entirely wasted her time. Nicole's upset that she'd make this sacrifice for her friends but not her sister, then lays on the ground with her to chitchat about all the dogs she's killed during this process. Wow, seems necessary. Nicole goes on about her physical issues and how Mia ain't gonna help when she can't wipe her own ass before she tells her that she's in for a murder/suicide and she's about to wipe em' both out. EZ GG. Our boy Chico barks suddenly at the same time someone shows up at the door, Nicole warns Mia not to move before she answers the door to a friendly neighbor returning the dog. She grabs Chico from the man and sets him down on the ground, where Chico immediately comes back proudly covered in Mia's blood with a pool of blood beneath him. Neighbors like okay this is fucking weird and becomes nervous before Nicole comes out with her flawless cover story "It isn't what it looks like, it's paint."

Lord, please

When the neighbor starts asking how Mia's doing, they start mutually judging her dog sitting skills when Nicole tries to shut the door again and he stops it to ask to speak to Mia. Nicole makes the excuse that she's already left and he says "No she hasn't, her cars still here."

It looks like it's all over for Nicole when the first person with a functional brain arrives.

"She's got a ride, she wasn't feeling well" Nicole says to the man who still obviously does not believe her before she loudly exclaims "For fuck sakes" and just shoots dude in the chest. Right on the doorstep. Leaves the evidence there and everything because she's got bigger things to do. Nicole then receives a text and call from an unknown number with the same voice changer she used, she calls it out (especially for being a $5 voice changer) as Mia and it instructs her to look at Mia's profile. Mia's live! Going on about how her sisters a big mean murderer, holding a knife to Chico as a threat to kill him. Boy Mia, this was thought out, wasn't it? Nicole walks into the kitchen to find Mia before it becomes a full on brawl live streamed to the randos on the internet.

Nicoles winning because the advantage of her opponent having two broken legs, but eventually Mia comes in with a swift headbutt and claims the victory. Mia stands up on her broken legs (lol) with a walker, finds Chico and limps out the door to safety stepping over the dead neighbor. She trips, because what's a horror movie without a trip at a vital time?

And there goes the most interesting character in the film

With three minutes to spare I'm wondering what the hell could be left for us to wrap this up, and so we get a scene of Mia crying on the cement before BIG MIKE (our Uber driver who has been camping out) calls from his car and says "You Mia?" "No." Honestly, my uber driver won't even wait a full minute to find me if I'm standing across the street, so we stand Big Mike.

Nicole pops up for the final (but effective) cheap jumpscare to indicate the possibility of a sequel, and although I think the reviews are enough to prevent this, let me just say... Please, do not.

I'd give this a solid 6/10, and it is mainly because of Big Mike and Chico.