A BITTER PILL // A FILM REVIEW OF "WHY DON'T YOU JUST DIE (PAPA SDOKHNI)!"
Modern day revenge thrillers tend to be very bloody, especially when they live in the hyper-stylized world that Quentin Tarantino loves to frequent. However, to call WHY DON'T YOU JUST DIE (PAPA SDOKHNI)! "bloody" would not quite do it justice. This frantically paced joy ride is made up of 90% blood - nearly every shot of the film is covered in it. And to be critical for a moment, it is more or less a one trick pony; that trick is to shoot, cut, and splash blood as much as possible. But under the direction of writer/director Kirill Sokolov, it's a wild, crazy, stylish and fun ride. So really, you can't ask for much more, can you?
The kinetic energy of the plot starts right away, as the opening scene finds Matvei (Aleksandr Kuznetsov) standing outside an apartment door, holding a hammer. He's nervous and it's clear from the music and camera work that he intends to use it on someone. That someone is Andrei (Vitaliy Khaev), a lumberjack of a man and the father of Matvei's girlfriend. Matvei claims that she wants them to meet. So he's let into the apartment and as the chaos begins, we still don't really know the "how's" and "why's."
We do eventually catch up: Matvei's girlfriend, and Andrei's daughter Olya (Evgeniya Kregzhde), has told some horrible and cruel stories about her father, and she wants him dead. So the faithful, if not overtly prepared boyfriend, springs into action. But things don't go according to plan, for anyone, and the bloody mayhem begins. Each character harbors their own secrets (the eyes of the mother, played by Elena Shevchenko, literally screams that she holds hundreds of them), and just when things start to quiet down, they amp back up and the chaos begins anew.
Kirill Sokolov has crafted a relentless joyride through the demented lens of blood soaked revenge. The opening scene is tense and gripping, and each actor chews the hell out of the scenery. I personally would have liked to see a bit more of Elena Shevchenko's own story, but with a fast paced 90-minutes, it doesn't have time to tell everything. Watching WHY DON'T YOU JUST DIE! will often leave a gleeful horror and smile on your face, even when it veers into the more ridiculous towards the end of the film. Not for the squeamish or faint of heart, but if you don't get grossed out by buckets and buckets of blood flying your way, you'll have a blast watching this family, quite literally, fall apart.
GRADE: B+
WRITTEN AND DIRECTED BY Kirill Sokolov STARRING Aleksandr Kuznetsov, Vitaliy Khaev, Evgeniya Kregzhde, Mikhail Gorevoy, Elena Shevchenko. Now available on digital platforms.