Film Review: Bystanders (2024)
(this movie deals with the subject of sexual assault, which is referenced, but not depicted in either the film or this review.)
Bystanders opens with a young woman fleeing through the woods at night while hostile male voices shout at her from the darkness. It’s a familiar scene in horror films that takes an abrupt turn into unexpected territory: she flags down a passing car, and the driver stops to help her out without being some sort of hand-waving, I-don’t-want-to-get-involved dork or cliched double-crosser. We then make a hard cut back eighteen hours to a couple preparing for a wedding, and an unrelated group of girls (including the one we saw fleeing through the forest) on the high school-college borderline going to a remote cabin to meet some very fratty guys for a party. It’s a common setup, and execution here is nothing remarkable, but thankfully this is the weakest leg of the film, and what follows easily exceeds the expectations set by the initial scenes.
Sure enough, the bros are dosing the ladies’ drinks the moment they walk in, and while these initial scenes feel a bit caricatured, the film takes an aggressive step forward, cutting to co-lead Abby (Brandi Botkin, who gave a stand-out performance in the otherwise unremarkable 2024 film Bag of Lies) waking up to hear the them discussing the sexual assault of both she and her friends in unflinchingly crude terms. It’s not an easy scene to absorb, and the abruptness with which it enters the film marks a distinct change in tone that will be maintained for the remainder of the runtime.
Can Botkin save this film like she did Bag of Lies?
When the story veers into such serious subject matter, you can almost feel the film shift into a higher gear, suddenly very conscious and careful about what it's trying to present and how it goes about doing so. After coming to, the victims are rounded up, taken outside, and told they’ll be hunted after a short countdown. The frat boys have apparently been doing this for some time, and the whole scene is pretty stomach-turning. Even though the film still feels rather amateur at this point–the lines are corny, the characters archetypical, the details fuzzy–it effectively hits the emotional notes it is trying to strike, and in that, succeeds where many indie horror films fall short.
Abby flees into the woods, flagging down the car and meeting up with the aforementioned couple, and here the film takes a much-needed turn for the better: Clare (Jamie Alvey) and Gray (Garrett Murphy) aren’t just Good Samaritans, they are a rapist-hunting power couple. Fortunately for the film, they’re also pretty damn charismatic.
“Oh, you are bloody…”
The film has a rough start, and that’s going to be a significant barrier for audiences. Many are going to be turned away by the stilted writing and tragicomic-cliché filmmaking on display in the first twenty minutes, but if they can hang on past that (reminder: this generation of film viewers go into fits if a movie is more than 80 minutes) there is a fair bit of quality to by found in Bystanders.
But none of that quality comes in the script. Like so many other small indie horror films at this level, it suffers from uneven development and lots of this-will-do writing. I hate to criticize it, as co-lead Jamie Alvey was the writer and she turned in a very solid performance (more on that later) but there are a lot of lines that feel lifted straight from Twitter.
Jamie Alvey, about to kill me for criticizing her script.
It’s all very much in-line with the practiced rhetoric of articulation that surrounds the idea of entitled, “toxic” masculinity, and enough new and interesting explorations of this topic have arrived in the wider zeitgeist that putting out something this familiar can’t be overlooked. This film does just doesn’t say anything interesting about shitty men. More directly: it is indeed possible to overuse the word ‘cunt’ as a female pejorative, and not as a matter of taste. Maybe I’m advocating for more nuanced, complex frat boys, but I'm so tired of seeing this particular straw sack get the bayonet. Please, don’t make your co-lead shout (and errantly co-opt, perhaps unintentionally?) the words of a 2014 hashtag into the face of her abuser. That’s lazy writing, and while it may get nods from the audience members who are terminally online, it undercut seriousness of the scene in a movie that had a commendable amount of success in exploring this territory.
This movie does not have great reviews, and I think most of the problems begin and end with the script–which isn’t bad because the plot points miss, but rather because none of the details haven't gotten much polish, and this creates a cheapening drag on the film as whole.
“And bring me back my dad's gun, motherf*cker”
The acting can be a touch flat, particularly in the scenes that don’t involve anyone being brutalized, but solid performances from the lead trio may well be the saving grace of the film. Claire (Alvey) and Gray (Murphy) in particular show a lot of chemistry and charisma, and this pays dividends as they’re the characters we spend the most time with. I wouldn’t turn down more stories of their apparently grand adventures in murdering garbage Gen Z men. The character are fun, and they inject a lot of life into the story. While I wasn’t a huge fan of this movie, I think it had a large deal of potential, most of it vested in the murderous lead couple who hate wedding obligations as much as I do.
I did like the scene where the film’s most unfortunate haircut has a heart-to-heart with a sentient baseball bat.
I wish there was more to like on the other side of the scales, but these Neanderthal frat boys are just that, and wanting them to be more isn’t supporting or excusing their worldview. Perhaps I’m wrong or misguided, but it feels like these kinds of characters are rarely nailed in films, and all of their misogynistic savagery feels a touch pantomime. For as over-the-top as he could be, no shithead frat boy archetype ever managed to exude such persistent menace and wildcard danger like Bobby Briggs in Twin Peaks, and I think writers would do well to look in this direction for writing their villains.
Final Thoughts
After a disastrous first twenty minutes, Bystanders does an impressive job of adding some much-needed charisma and charm to the film. While the script could have used some significant polishing, I think there is something to appreciate and to like here. I would have a touch more daring in the filmmaking, a willingness to take risks in the plot, and some nuanced villains, but it’s not a complete waste.
All in all, Bystanders is an uneven, significantly flawed rape-revenge film that has some significant redeeming qualities. Co-lead Jamie Alvey absolutely killed it on-screen, and I’d love to see more of her in front of the camera in the future, as well as Bodkin and Murphy. It’s worth a watch if the plot sounds interesting and you can enter in good faith that it’s first foot forward is not its best.
Score: 5.7
Strengths
Genuinely good performances from the good guys
Flawed, but not boring
Meditates well enough on the glee of killing crappy dudes
Weaknesses
Scenes that don’t deal with heavy subject matter feel poorly-written
Doesn’t do anything new
Flat start means viewers will tune out early
Bystanders is available on VOD in many places.
