What Keeps You Alive is a thriller movie about a same sex couple who go away to celebrate their one year anniversary only to find out that one of them is not who they seem to be. Thus begins a cliche story that doesn’t have much to bring to the table in the genre of your significant other is not who they pretend to be. What keeps You Alive (2018) movie review is below
When they are introduced the couple seem very loving, always smiling and sharing stories of their past to show off how quietly and unique their childhood was. The stories are not particularly interesting but it gives us a bit more insight into the lives of the couple which is always welcoming. As the story develops we start to see holes in the stories of our characters. It quickly becomes obvious that one of them is hiding a dark secret. Not saying who it is but this becomes very obvious from the moment we are introduced to the main characters.
As the story progresses, the two main characters bicker and yell at each other and start to mistrust each other even more. From that point on it is more of the same and the story never really takes off. It is usually the same – there is a set up, you know exactly what is most likely to happen, and that thing ends up happening. The story becomes very predictable and boring since we know how it will end. Based on this I started to skip around and I felt like I didn’t miss anything important. Even with skipping I was bored of it and was constantly waiting for the story to pick up some steam. It never really did.
As for action, there are some chases, few somewhat intense moments and a decent amount of gore. Most of the gore is offscreen but a good amount is shown afterwards. Violence is the only thing that I can say about the movie because it was something to look forward to. There is also some nudity that is shown but nothing graphic. Everything else can be categorized as cliche.
For example (and the following list of items might be considered SPOILERS): life partner is not who he/she pretends to be, person had weird childhood, parent insisted their children learn hunting, “you revealed my secret, now I got to kill you”, villain/hero is dead but is not dead, the villain was evil before/has killed before and he/she is evil again and many others. If you think anything above is not cliche by this point, I recommend this movie to you. You will love it.
Nothing in this movie felt fresh. However, making the couple same sex was uncommon and unique. Besides that, the movie relies on tired cliches to keep it going which becomes repetitive and uninteresting. The characters themselves are not really interesting either. Besides having boring backgrounds, they all fit this cookie cutter mold of “I am nice and sweet and you are mean and nasty”. Nothing sticks out with them so they just become this blob that melts into the background. How hard is it to give them a background that is not played out? Their dialogue is nothing new either. It is well delivered but it is not unique in any way.
Overall the movie for me was boring and filled with way too many cliches to count. If you don’t mind cliches, more power to you. However, for me, the story felt stale and I am finding it hard to recall anything interesting I might have seen while trying to pay attention to this movie.
Thanks for reading my What keeps You Alive (2018) movie review
