Review by
Eric Hillis
Directed by: John Ainslie
Starring: Kimberly Laferriere, Rogan Christopher, Janet Porter, Christian
McKenna
I imagine if you work in a hotel that whenever you see a "Do Not
Disturb" sign hanging on a door, you probably start to wonder about the
level of mess you're going to have to clean up later. What are the
occupants up to that they don't wish to be disturbed? Maybe they're just
having a nap, or enjoying some quality intimacy? Or maybe they're up to
something sinister? In writer/director John Ainslie's
Do Not Disturb, the protagonists do a lot of napping, enjoy a lot of intimacy, but
also engage in behaviour of the most sinister variety.
Hoping to get their relationship back on track after a miscarriage,
young newlyweds Chloe (Kimberly Laferriere) and Jack (Rogan Christopher) arrive at an "adults only" hotel in Miami for their honeymoon.
They're immediately targeted by a horny older couple – Wayne (Christian McKenna) and Wendy (Janet Porter) – and after a night of partying, the
two couples begin to engage in a bout of wife-swapping before a jealous
Jack calls a halt to proceedings.
The next morning, a badly hungover Chloe and Jack agree to pretend the
previous night never happened. While lounging on the beach they're
approached by a nonsensically ranting man at the tail end of a very bad
trip. The stranger gives them several bags of peyote before drowning
himself in the sea.
It's at this point that Do Not Disturb begins to test the
viewer's ability to suspend disbelief. Chloe and Jack simply watch as
the man takes his own life and get on with their day. The film has done
nothing prior to this point to suggest that they possess such
sociopathic natures. Back in their hotel room they decide to take the
peyote (I guess they never saw Altered States), and it's from this point on that the movie shifts into gore-soaked
horror. It's all a little contradictory, as the film suggests that it's
the drugs that are turning Chloe and Jack into monsters, yet they were
stone cold sober when they allowed a man to drown himself before their
eyes.
Much of Do Not Disturb plays like a vacuous North
American take on the sort of extreme genre movies that have been coming
out of France over the past couple of decades. It doesn't really have a
lot to say, and what little it does have to say is expressed crudely
through dialogue that never feels like a couple speaking to one another,
but rather a screenwriter desperate to get their point across to the
audience.
Numerous movies have tried to recreate the effects of a drug trip, but
it's usually a case of falling back on clichéd trippy visuals. Ainslie
does at least buck this trend somewhat, with some clever staging to
reflect the passing of hours and days in what amounts to seconds of
screen time – it's the sort of clever filmmaking that makes you wish you
could see the frantic preparations occurring just out of shot to pull
off the effect.
Ultimately, Do Not Disturb is dogged by its inability to
figure out whether it's a satirical comedy or something more…well,
disturbing. The viewer is left with something close to mental whiplash
as scenes of explicit violence suddenly morph awkwardly into bedroom
farce. This is reflected in the acting styles of Laferriere and
Christopher, with the former playing it straight while the latter
approaches Jerry Lewis levels of mugging at times. The comic elements
may play to drunken horror film festival audiences, but you can't help
but view their addition as a missed opportunity to interrogate
relationship issues through the lens of extreme cinema.
