Director – Sean King O’Grady, Screenplay/Based on the Novella by Max Booth III, Producers – Peter Block, Ryan Lewis, Josh Malerman & William Stertz, Photography – Jean-Philippe Bernier, Music – David Chapdelaine, Visual Effects – Readymade VFX (Supervisor – Patrick Longstreth), Makeup & Creature Effects – Dan Reibert Creations, Production Design – Amy Williams. Production Company – Atlas Industries/Hantz Motion Pictures/Spin a Black Yarn/A Bigger Boat.
Cast
Sierra McCormick (Melissa), Pat Healy (Robert), Vinessa Shaw (Diane), Lisette Alexis (Amy), John James Cronin (Bobby)
Plot
Husband and wife Robert and Diane, their teenage daughter Melissa and younger son Bobby gather in the bathroom of the house to take shelter as a storm threatens outside. The next morning as they try to leave, they discover that a fallen tree has demolished the room outside and blocked the door. They are trapped there with no supplies until someone finds them. As they wait, tensions begin to fray. Meanwhile, rattlesnakes invade the bathroom, while there appear to be strange things outside. Melissa believes that what is happening may tie back to her Gothic girlfriend Amy who performed a necromancy spell on herself because she was feeling dead inside.
We Need to Do Something was the first work of fiction from director Sean King O’Grady who had previously produced and directed Land Grab (2015) and co-directed Our American Family (2021), both documentaries. The film is based on a 2020 novella by horror writer Max Booth III, who also writes the screenplay.
We Need to Do Something was shot during the Covid-19 lockdown. As such, it makes a perfect allegory for the pandemic. Apart from a handful of flashbacks to Sierra McCormick and girlfriend Lisette Alexis, the entire film takes place on a single set – in a bathroom – with a cast of four people. There’s the whole theme of the family not quite in quarantine but in isolation with the rest of the world locked out beyond the door where things have descended into chaos. The premise of the family isolated indoors and being torn apart by inner tensions and dwindling (or lack of any) supplies makes for rich allegorical potential particularly when you look at We Need to Do Something in the frame of being a pandemic lockdown film.
Family trapped in a bathroom – (l to r) mother Vinessa Shaw, son John James Cronin, father Pat Healy and teenage daughter Sierra McCormick
The essential hook of the film is that it exists in terms of The Ambiguously Fantastic – that we never know what is happening out there beyond the door of the bathroom. There are hints at all manner of things, sounds and people coming past but we never see any of them. Even when Vinessa Shaw breaks through the wall at the end, she returns bloodied but we get no clue as to what it is she encountered out there. There are suggestions of something to do with the necromantic spell that Lisette Alexis cast on herself, although this is only speculation. Even the end of the film refuses to let the possibilities cohere into answers.
All of the actors create finely drawn characters and great performances – the one who really goes to town with their performance is Pat Healy as the father. Sean King O’Grady winds the tension up – far more than one thought possible with a film contained within a single room – and pushes the material towards something fairly icky like when Sierra McCormick starts to eat the severed tongue. The one scenes that gets a real jump of you is where they find the never-seen dog and pat it through the door calling “Who’s a good boy?” before the abrupt answer “I’m a good boy” (a part incredibly enough voiced by Ozzy Osbourne).
