Sweetheart (JD Dillard, 2019)

After her boat sinks in a storm, Jenn (Kiersey Clemons) washes up on the shore of a small island. 

While she struggles to figure out how to survive on her own, Jenn is confronted by a new threat: a mysterious entity that rises out of the sea every night, intent on dragging her back into the water...

A Blumhouse production, Sweetheart is a superb example of its model - high concept, small-scale and made with solid craftsmanship.At 79 minutes long with credits, Sweetheart is a stripped-down genre flick that does not waste a single frame.

This is my kind of movie - well-crafted, unpretentious, and respects its audience's ability to follow the narrative without handholding or signposting. 


At no point does the movie feel rushed or threadbare - the script offers morsels of background, but lets Clemons' actions (and reactions) do the character-building. It might be me reacting to how inundated we are now with over-explanation and padded runtimes, but I really appreciated how straightforward the story-telling was.

Opening with a shot of Kiersey Clemons washing up on a beach, the movie does not waste time - she immediately starts getting into survival mode.

And rather than dragging out the survival stuff, Jenn has adapted to her new existence - learning how to fish, and how to build shelter - by the 20 minute mark. The filmmakers have enough confidence in viewers that they do not re-hash beats we have already seen in Castaway, Lost and similar films.

That less-is-more approach extends to the film’s antagonist. The film is confident enough to hold off on introducing it for about 1/4 of the movie - I am not even sure the soundtrack kicks in until it appears. 

While I do not want to go into spoilers, the way Dillard introduces it is deliciously terrifying. In the middle of the night, our heroine fires a flare at a passing plane. As the flare reaches the water, we catch a silhouette in the distance staring at her.

It is a strong uncanny moment, and the filmmakers continue to keep this mysterious creature offscreen, using shadow, depth of field and sound design to provide only slivers of what it could be. While the creature is terrifying, the focus is mostly during the daytime, which only adds to the uncanny atmosphere.

The photography by Stefan Duscio (who lensed this year's terrific The Invisible Man) is extremely bright - from the first frame, there is something uneasy about how lush the frame is. It feels like Jenn has stepped over into another realm. The juxtaposition with the night scenes is very stark - emphasising the sense of entrapment and claustrophobia our protagonist experiences.

The script (by Dillard, Alex Hyner and Alex Theurer) even allows the audience to fill in pieces of the story that do not directly relate to Jenn's plight. There is a moment involving dried blood on a knife that is never explained, and we never need it. It provides the one signifier of how Jenn's experience has changed her.

For the first half of the movie, Jenn's characterisation is entirely based on what we see. As the only character onscreen for the majority of the runtime, Clemons is terrific.

She brings a vulnerability and intelligence to what could have been a garden-variety final girl. While she handles the terror and rage of her plight, the thing I most enjoyed about her performance was the way she conveyed Jenn learning how to survive - there is something very affecting about the joy she shows when spearing a fish for the first time. Jenn never comes across as a confident, super-smart survivalist - Clemons presents   

About halfway through, other survivors from her boat land on the island and we start to get a sense of how much of an outsider she was, and how little agency or purpose she had (or was seen to have). 

What is important to note, is that this is an assumption, built almost entirely on what these other characters say. Once again, the filmmakers trust the audience to accept this story or take it as historic revisionism.

Ultimately, whether this is over-stating or not, the person being described no longer exists. On the island, the tables have turned - Jenn is the one with knowledge, resources and power.


Furthermore, the blood-encrusted knife and the blood stains on the bottom of the survivors' inflatable raft undermine their attempt to present themselves as rational, reasonable and morally sound.

That is what I love most about Sweetheart - it treats its audience as adults and as sophisticated active viewers. It allows viewers to use their imaginations to build out the diegesis, not simply in terms of what Jenn's nemesis looks like. 

We do eventually get a look at the creature, but the movie does not lose out because of it. As stated at the outset, the movie knows when to start, and when we finally get a look at the Big Bad, the movie quickly winds up. 

A well-made, clever genre exercise, Sweetheart is a great example of well-crafted genre filmmaking. 

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