Radius

WHY'D I WATCH IT?
Another IMDb thriller which promises a dude who discovers he radiates death.

WHAT'D I THINK? *SPOILERS*
A variety of wildlife and livestock.

This movie is basically what I wanted The Happening to be. Out in the rural midwest a mysterious force is killing people, what could it be? A virus? A terrorist attack?

In this movie it's an Aura of Death which Main Guy discovers he has after a car crash. Main Girl eventually stumbles on him, another victim of the same crash, but with the power to negate Main Guy's aura while she's within it.

The negation part isn't communicated terribly clearly and Main Guy is way too assertive about the properties of his Aura. At first it just seemed plausible that it only works during the day time, or so long as you have direct line-of-sight, so I don't think he should have been all "trust me, you won't die" when he knows practically nothing about it.

I do appreciate that it doesn't take him forever to figure out the cause of death is him and it's not unbelievable that he'd figure it out as quickly as he does with the evidence presented.

So the movie starts out briskly and continues apace. Main Guy discovers the Aura, is horrified, then discovers it doesn't work around Main Girl and the inevitable tension results. Police start a manhunt for both of them and naturally they're not going to listen to Main Guy explain the means by which he kills people, because that would make too much sense. I also don't think he does a good job even trying to persuade the police that "hey, YOU WILL DIE unless you listen to me" which they should be all ears for because the cause of all the death is totally unknown.


Both characters have amnesia prior to the car crash and we get insubstantial glimpses that eventually culminate into a greater narrative predicating the events of the movie.

The main conclusion is that there was a cosmological event that struck the two and knocked them out, somehow giving them these strange properties. The big twist ending is that, and I predicted this: Main Guy is a serial killer.

Main Guy just picks up a grieving suicidal woman on a bridge and offers to take her to his secluded CABIN IN THE WOODS. Gosh, it'd be awfully thematic if it turns out the guy with the Aura of Death kills people normally... and that's exactly the case.

I'm disappointed that I predicted the ending, but I really can't be upset because that's the sort of twist I would have went with.

Thankfully, because he is presented to be a moral character (towards humans ONLY), he kills himself instead of continuing to spread death. Which... isn't exactly guaranteed to stop anything, for all he knows everyone in that hospital room drops dead regardless of whether he shoots himself in the head. It's a cosmological event that imbued your body with certain properties with no apparent regard for your mental faculties.

Anyway, the movie stayed interesting, did basically what I wanted it to do, but it didn't really go beyond that. Decent budget high-concept thriller.


Final Verdict:

[Good]