Review by John Delia, Sr.
Intentionally confusing, but very farfetched, the film Lucky takes a long time to set up before it lets you down. If anything positive comes from the film it does champion women who do fight back.
After getting a turndown by her book publisher for another printing, May Ryer (Bea Grant) returns to her car in the office building garage. Loading her books in the trunk of her car for a future book signing, she hears a woman screaming somewhere on a lower level. Disturbed, but not thinking of it too much, she drives home. But, she can’t get out of her head that maybe her career is coming to an end.
She does an occasional book signing and her husband Ted (Dhruv Uday Singh), a Philosophy teacher, tries to boost her spirits, but there’s not much he can do at this point. Weird things are starting to happen to her finding a broken dish and a shard of glass. In the middle of the night she sees an intruder in the back yard, but her husband says it’s the man who comes to kill them each night. Not showing much alarm, she follows her husband down the stairs stepping in some glass in the process. Coming face to face with the intruder, her husband kills the man, but the body disappears.
So begins a repetitive happening each night as May tries to come to grips as to why this is all happening. Director Natasha Kermani tries very hard to make each scene believable maybe hoping that the audience will shrug aside the fact that it’s very implausible that the man could be getting away with the crime each night and returning to do it all over again. There is a method to Writer Brea Grant’s madness however, but if you don’t “get it†you’ll have wasted your time.
One tidbit of dialogue that comes late in the finale does imply the meaning behind the whole film. I do agree with it, but it comes too late to make up for the repetitive terror that could have been explained early on. However most women and repressed men may want to watch it again to cheer on May knowing why the film was made in the first place. If you still don’t get it, play it back with the Audio Commentary on the DVD.
Specifications and additional video information:
Cast: Brea Grant, Leith M. Burke, Dhruv Uday Singh, Hunter C. Smith, Yasmine A-
Bustami, Kausar Mohammed
Directed by: Natasha Kermani
Written by: Brea Grant
Genre: Drama, Thriller
MPAA Rating: Not Rated. Contains language, violence, gore
Running Time: 1 hr. 23 min.
Video Release Date: August 3, 2021
Language: English
Reviewed Format: DVD
Subtitles: English SDH, Spanish
Distributed by: Shudder