Double Date (2017)

[runningscared]

Movie: Double Date (2017), directed by Benjamin Barfoot

Watched on: Showtime

Ran: 7.63 miles, 9’20”/mile, 01:11:12 (slow recovery run)

 

What’s this? It seems that I have inadvertently chosen to watch two horror-comedies in a row. Could it be that my psyche is trying to tell me something? Is it begging for, if not the sweet, sweet release that only death can bring, than at least the most minimal relief from all of [gesticulates at everything everywhere] THIS in the form of a wan chuckle or two? It is truly a mystery for the ages. In any event, tonight’s flick is Double Date, a delightful English romp that will invite inevitable comparisons to Shaun of the Dead because it’s got some laughs and everyone talks funny.

 

Double Date begins with, appropriately enough, a double date: two sisters, Kitty and Lulu, have brought a pair of drunk numbskulls back to their mansion. The lads assume they’re there for a bit of fun, but actually they are there for a bit of excessively stabby murder (so, a bit of fun). And when I say “excessively shabby,” Kitty knifes her fella a total of 19 times—I counted, because I’m like that.

 

Anyway, after the most stylish animated opening credits sequence I’ve seen in quite some time (seriously, it’s a thing of beauty and the creators should be commended), we cut to Our Hero, Jim, who is getting dumped via text message in a pub. Jim’s about to turn 30 and he’s still a virgin, which he feels is cause for consternation. His friend Alex promises to get him deflowered before the Big 3-0, which leads to misadventures, e.g. a night in jail for Jim when Alex fixes him up with a drunken grieving widow; Jim rejects her advances and innocently takes her to her home to sleep it off, and the local constabulary assumes nefarious intent.

 

The next day, Jim is being understandably disconsolate in the pub when who should walk in all sexy and slo-mo but Kitty and Lulu? Much to his surprise and alarm (and to Alex’s utter incomprehension), they are overtly interested in Jim. Despite making one of the worst chat-up attempts in the history of spoken language, Jim is astonished when the sisters agree to meet him and Alex later for some reason. The reason, it turns out, is that Kitty and Lulu are actively targeting Jim for demographic purposes: in addition to the corpses they’ve already collected, these two daddy’s girls need a virgin to sacrifice in order to complete a spell to bring their father back from the dead.

 

So that’s our premise, and the rest of the movie consists of the real double date of the title. The sisters’ ultimate goal is to get Jim back to the mansion for the sacrifice before the end of the night, but there are multiple amusing detours and ensuing hijinks, such as a truly abysmal music concert they attend in order to buy drugs, and a birthday party for Jim with his impossibly embarrassing and strait-laced Christian family, complete with a family dance routine that will make you cringe so hard you’ll need corrective surgery afterwards. Follow that up with a drug-related car crash (just say no, kids), a visit to Alex’s aggressively awful dad to borrow his car, and finally it’s back to Murder Mansion for the whole ritual-killing-and-zombie-dad thing. The only hitch is that Lulu has grown rather fond of Jim over the course of the evening; will she still be able to go through with it all?

 

There’s quite a bit to like about Double Date; it’s smart, even when some its characters aren’t, and while it’s rarely sidesplittingly funny, it maintains a pretty consistent drip-feed of dependable British humor. All of the actors are competent and their performances believable, with the sisters being the standouts: Kelly Wenham as Kitty is appropriately unhinged and clearly actually capable of kicking a boxing dummy’s head off in slow-motion. And the conflicted Lulu is played with disarming sweetness by Georgia Groome, who was delightful as Georgia Nicolson in the otherwise-disappointing film adaptation of Angus, Thongs, and Full-Frontal Snogging (what can I tell you, I have a soft spot for British YA fiction).

 

On the list of potential negatives, Double Date does feel formulaic at times, and occasionally predictable (Chekhov’s Pen Knife makes an obvious appearance, for example). It also has what must be the single longest bare-knuckle fight I’ve ever seen on film, which may or may not count against it. Seriously, it makes me want to fire up They Live and time that ridiculous and interminable fistfight between Keith David and Rowdy Roddy Piper with a stopwatch, because I think Double Date may have it beat—in duration, yes, but also in violence, realism, and excitement. Horror fans should also be forewarned that the film doesn’t get overtly supernatural until the final ten minutes, so until then, you’re mostly watching a serial killer flick in which there are occasional shots of someone painting arcane symbols on the floor with blood.

 

Still, good times all around. Double Date isn’t likely to become a time-honored classic like Shaun of the Dead, but I don’t hesitate to recommend it to people looking for a fun evening in, especially those who enjoy British humor. It beats the risk of getting bled out for the sake of raising someone’s father from the grave, anyway.