Saturday night on Shudder:

It’s Saturday night! Time for a venture onto the Shudder platform with their latest Exclusive and Original feature.

This week’s focus is on Lucky, directed by Natashsa Kermani (Imitation Girl) and starring Brea Grant (Eastsiders), who also took on writing duties for this movie.
Brea stars as May, a self help novelist, who is being stalked on a nightly basis by a threatening figure in her own house.
On face value, you’d be forgiven for thinking that Lucky feels like a standard made-for-tv feature due to its low budget and slow pace in delivery, but the deeper you delve into its narrative, the more complex and smart it becomes.

The character of May is an intriguing one, and as our lead protagonist, serves as a portal into the universe that is created around her. The intricacy involved in the narrative however also rests on this point of view; because we view things through May’s perspective, we are reliant on this depiction of the events that surround, but here’s the ticker… May is a trauma survivor, and trauma itself is an incredibly complex thing. No one person experiences trauma the same way, and as such, can experience fragments of these memories that have mentally scarred her discernment of the world. Like her, the audience is left to put these pieces together and figure out why she keeps seeing this violent presence each night and why those around her become distant and withdrawn, especially her husband Ted (Dhruv Uday Singh).

If you have the patience to journey through these fractured events that May is traversing, it can lead to a climax that has been building throughout the film towards a revelatory conclusion.

Some may spot that conclusion coming, and the dots that are formed slips easily into predictability but in some cases this allows the viewer to scrutinise the message further and for this reviewer, that feels like the most relevant expression that Kermani and Grant are aiming for. A subject that is ripe for conversation and through Lucky have provided a mode of thought that feels like a strong and passionate project on behalf of the creative team.

The Prognosis:

Don’t be misguided by the “artsy” mode of delivery that this film goes for.
Nor the low-budget style of direction that the feature is subjected to.
Lucky is a relevant and poignant film that strides to tackle or expose a subject that we should all be paying attention to and discuss. That subject is trauma and not only the shockingly commonality that violence has become in society, be it domestic or otherwise, but also the absence of support or understanding that is out there for survivors of a traumatic episode.
Often, those victims are termed lucky for surviving their ordeal, but the mental scars that are left over have a resounding effect on all facets of their lives. It can be an isolating experience where it feels like no one can understand what they are going through, and yet with so many cases, why are we not able to address and confront these issues together?
This may sound like a deep analysis of what is on show, but it’s a subject that absolutely needs to be addressed and I think that both Kermani and Grant have produced a solid, entertaining movie that takes on this tough issue and presents a solid representation of what it means to be forced into a world where the remnants of trauma is with us in every waking moment of our lives.

• Saul Muerte

To listen to the audio review please click the link below:

https://anchor.fm/saul-muerte/embed/episodes/Movie-review-Lucky-2021-ernl7v