In an interesting twist on “eat the rich”, Lowlifes shows the viewer a good time and some class politics you can really sink your teeth into.
Tesh Guttikonda and Mitch Oliver’s Lowlifes was an unexpected blast! Tubi original movies are usually synonymous with cheesy, low-budget, dumb fun, but I thought this movie was a lot better than some of the horror released in the theaters this year. To sell this movie without any spoilers, it’s essentially a clash between two families when one is forced to stay the night at a random house in a small country town. Think Texas Chain Saw meets You’re Next meets The Purge.
It’s better to watch without spoilers, so consider giving it a watch before reading on.
The story kicks off with a seemingly typical family road trip: the nerdy brother, Jeffrey (Josh Zaharia), the edgy sister, Amy (Amanda Fix), the stern father, Keith (Matthew McCaull), and the cautious mother, Kathleen (Elyse Levesque). They encounter Vern (Richard Harmon) and Billy (Ben Sullivan), whom they dismiss as “lowlifes.” When they run into the same men again due to a broken-down car, Keith agrees to drive Billy back to his house, despite Kathleen’s objections.
This kind of moment happens a lot in horror movies, so the viewer is primed to wait in anxious anticipation: what might happen to that visiting family of four? Is Billy going to do anything to them? Tension builds as the moments pass by. However, this is where the movie takes its first wild turn: after Billy realizes something suspicious is going on that even the viewer was unaware of, in one quick motion, Jeffrey kills him, stabbing him in the neck.
The family doesn’t seem to care at all, more annoyed about the bloody mess than anything else. It’s shocking and frightening in a way where it makes you laugh and then wonder why you would be laughing at something so awful. It is revealed that this is a family of cannibals who head out into the remote countryside on a yearly trip to find “nobodies” to kill and eat. Their father pushes this idea that they should only kill people who are supposedly of “no value” to the world, and apparently, to him, those people are lower class townspeople living in the countryside, emphasizing the movie’s focus on class.
The family heads to Billy’s house and is invited to dinner by the welcoming Clearys: Juli Ann (Cassandra Sawtell), Savannah (Brenna Llewellyn), Big Mac (Dayleigh Nelson), and Neville (Kevin McNulty). The movie does a great job balancing out all of these characters; there’s always a believable reason when characters are gone for extended periods of time, and they all have enough defining personalities and characteristics that it’s easy to tell them apart. Tensions rise as the visiting family plots to kill the Clearys.
While Jeffrey and Keith carry out their plans, Amy finds herself bonding with Savannah, who confides about her life and dreams. Savannah talks about her skill in archery and how her life has always revolved around taking care of her family, but Amy convinces her that she should try taking things for herself. It’s clear that this is advice that Amy herself wants to follow but isn’t sure how to yet, frequently protesting her family’s cannibalism “hobby” but remaining complicit in their actions.
The two girls wind up sharing the bed in Savannah’s rooms (“Do college roommates usually share a bed?”) and having sex. Amy almost attempts to kill Savannah, but ultimately decides not to go through with it because she sympathizes with Savannah’s position of making sacrifices for your family.
After some in-fighting and physical reconciliation, Keith and Kathleen attempt to kill Juli Ann but are interrupted when Savannah shoots an arrow through the window, killing Kathleen.
This sends the whole family into a flux: Jeffery is immediately filled with despair, Keith plans his revenge, and Amy yells at her father for putting them all in danger for the sake of fulfilling his “hobby.” No one seems to pick up on the irony of the situation; they are plotting vengeance against Savannah for acting their mother even though Savannah was only acting to defend her own family.
Savannah attempts to save Juli Ann, but this only results in the both of them being tied up. In order to distract Keith and Amy and give herself time to escape, she reveals that Amy is a lesbian. Keith is enraged by this, and it’s impossible to miss how he refers to her lesbianism as “disgusting” despite the fact that he was trying to feed his hostages the cooked-up pieces of their dead family. Amy boldly declares she’d “rather eat pussy than people,” and Savannah seizes the moment to stab Keith in the eye with a fork, and, in a disgusting turn, he pulls it out and eats it.
Amidst the chaos and gore, the sheriff arrives but misjudges the situation, shooting Savannah because of his offensive preconceptions about her family. The movie ends with Amy killing him, burning the house down, and heading off in her family’s trailer wearing one of the Clearys’ hats: “Ain’t that something,” she says, driving off to freedom.
For a movie with such a low budget, I thought the acting was good—over-the-top in a way that I think matched the slightly humorous tone very well—and so was the writing. It got a bit on-the-nose sometimes in making its points about class, but it made for really comedic moments, so it wasn’t a huge issue for me. Amanda Fix in particular gives a great performance, and I hope to see her in more horror moving forward.
I see the issue with the constant lesbians-are-predatory-murderers content we get, but I felt like this wasn’t particularly egregious despite technically falling into that. In my opinion, it added even more to the class commentary; Keith, who spent the whole movie dehumanizing the Clearys, was quick to reject his daughter’s lesbianism, while Juli Ann explicitly accepted her sister’s sexuality. At the end of the day, I appreciated the nuanced handling of Amy's character and think that it avoided overly predatory stereotypes.
Though I don’t think this movie said anything about class politics that hasn’t been said, I think its message is delivered in such a fun, original package that it’s well worth the watch anyway.
★★★★☆
7.5 out of 10
You can stream Lowlifes on Tubi today!
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