Movie Review: What Keeps You Alive (English)

Colin Minihan's What Keeps You Alive is the latest to join the canon of remote cabin thrillers, only this time it is centred around a lesbian couple, Jackie and Jules, who head to an isolated lakeside dwelling in the middle of nowhere to celebrate their first wedding anniversary. Barely have they arrived when Jules begins to notice subtle changes in Jackie's behaviour, leading to her unravelling previously unknown truths about her wife (in a Get Out-like fashion), much to her shock and disbelief, and realises perhaps a little too late that her survival depends on getting away from the very person she loves the most. The revisionist-yet-unnerving cat-and-mouse game between the girls notwithstanding, the slow-burn psychodrama hinges heavily on flimsy manipulations and its protagonists making incredibly dumb decisions that defy logic, thus deflating much of its frisson-inducing moments, but Minihan's bloated screenplay doesn't help either. And for a film that tackles betrayal and trust issues in a relationship, never for once does it go beyond the usual how-much-do-you-really-know-about-the-other-person trope, instead conveniently resorting to skin-deep psychology ("It's nature, not nurture.") and preposterous twists to tie up all the loose ends. Yet it's a survival thriller that needs to be told, if just for including queer characters and exploring their power dynamics in a genre that's commonly man-versus-woman.