Mr Movie: We Need to Do Something gets a top rating - but not for what you think

Sometimes one wonders how in the heck a movie project gets a green light from producers. That question was on my mind all the way through “We Need to Do Something.”

A family of four go into a bathroom when a powerful storm hits their area. Since tornadoes are a worry, one can assume they’re in the Midwest. When the blow slows down they try to leave but a huge tree has blocked the door.

As time marches on — you assume it is days — and with communication to the outside world cut off, no food, problems with an aggressive snake, strange rescuers outside and a curse cast by the daughter and her lesbian girlfriend, things go from bad to worse.

You can apply the bad to worse to the story. It starts badly and from there grows to worse, and from worse it transitions to worst.

The cast is small and outside of Vanessa Shaw (“3:10 to Yuma”), they are unknowns. You expect people to be out of sorts and a bit upset about being trapped. Attempts by the actors to pull that off is way overdone.

It’s overwrought on steroids.

Back to the green light, with just one set, the movie must have been fairly inexpensive to make. So why not spend the saved cash from inexpensive actors and just one set, and improve the script.

It’s like screenwriter, Max Booth III had no idea where he wanted to go with his movie so he just sat down, started pecking away at the keyboard and let his mind wander.

There is a saying about wandering minds. Sometimes they’re too small to be left alone.

That’s the case with Booth’s screenplay. The script definitely needed a rewrite or two and the help of another writer to add some flavor to the writing. The movie has fewer places to go than a bathroom with one door to the outside.

Speaking of bathrooms, all through this one you’ll be wondering — as I did — how there is a bathroom in a house that has no access to the house? Not that it matters, by the time something other than bickering happens in Booth’s plot, you’re deep into the movie and thinking about visiting your own bathroom and flushing this movie experience away.

Adding to the the bad to worse to worst scenario is how director Sean King O’Grady doesn’t have a clue about what to do with a horror-drama. He’s a documentarian and this is his first attempt at a movie with a storyline. O’Grady needs more storytelling practice.

Or maybe he needs to stick with documentaries.

To put it succinctly, I’ve seen some bad ones but “We Need to Do Something” is the worst horror movie I’ve seen in years. As I sit here writing this review, it might even get honors as being the worst horror movie I’ve had the NOT-pleasure to see.

That brings us to my recommendation for “We Need to Do Something.” It’s very simple. You — not we — need to do something — ELSE.

Rated R for violence, mature themes and language. It can be streamed on a number of streaming sites.

Rating: 1/2 out of 5

This story was originally published September 3, 2021 at 5:00 AM with the headline "Mr Movie: We Need to Do Something gets a top rating - but not for what you think."