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LOS ANGELES, Oct. 17 (UPI) -- Do Not Disturb, which screened Friday at the Screamfest horror film festival in Los Angeles, is a mature take on marital horror. The leads look great covered in blood, but the issues they face are scarier. Chloe (Kimberly Laferriere) and Jack (Rogan Christopher) are on their honeymoon in Miami. They've survived a miscarriage and already are fighting.
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Chloe thinks Jack is cheap and won't grow up. Jack doesn't feel ready to have kids and thinks Chloe is losing her sense of fun.
They're talking about real issues, and the actors handle it with gravitas and a real sense of people who maybe aren't the most analytical. Real people may not be the most articulate about the psychological phenomena they are experiencing, but they still go there.
Chloe may tell Jack to grow up, and Jack may respond that growing up seems like the opposite of fun. But, when Jack says Chloe cries every time she sees a child, that's a real and poignant observation.
On the beach, a guy having a bad trip dumps his drugs on them and walks into the ocean. Jack convinces Chloe to take the drugs, which he finds online are peyote.
This initially fuels the conflict in their marriage. Jack vilifies Chloe for not considering drugs and irresponsible activities to be fun, and Choe can't convince Jack that responsibility is rewarding and not boring.
They take the drugs, and the film conveys the trippy experience. Writer-director John Ainslie captures the sense of losing time.
Plates of eaten food appear when Chloe and Jack forget eating. That gives way to evidence of even worse activities they committed in a blackout.
Increasingly, bloody incidents involving body parts and biting flesh classify as horror, although maybe the entire marital discord counts. Honestly, losing autonomy is scarier than any ghosts or killings.
Christopher and Laferriere are as convincing acting like they're drugged out of their minds as they were as a newlywed couple still figuring things out. The trip escalates to its bloody conclusion.
Do Not Disturb is one of the more unsettling films at Screamfest. We come to this festival for blood and guts or ghosts and monsters, but the relationship conflict unleashed by this bad trip will stay with viewers long after they sober up.
Fred Topel, who attended film school at Ithaca College, is a UPI entertainment writer based in Los Angeles. He has been a professional film critic since 1999, a Rotten Tomatoes critic since 2001 and a member of the Television Critics Association since 2012. Read more of his work in Entertainment.
