She Never Died
| She Never Died | |
|---|---|
| Directed by | Audrey Cummings |
| Screenplay by | Jason Krawczyk |
| Produced by | Zach Hagen
Bill Marks Jennifer Mesich |
| Starring | Olunike Adeliyi
Peter MacNeill Kiana Madeira Michelle Nolden Noah Dalton Danby |
| Cinematography | Ian Macmillan |
| Edited by | Michael P. Mason |
| Music by | Jim McGrath |
Production companies | A71 Productions, Alternate Ending Studios |
Release date | 14 April 2020 (Canada) |
Running time | 89 minutes |
| Country | Canada |
| Language | English |
She Never Died is a 2019 Canadian horror comedy film directed by Audrey Cummings and written by Jason Krawczyk. It premiered in at Cinefest Sudbury on 19 September 2019 as a ‘sister-sequel’ to He Never Died (2015) starring Henry Rollins.[1] [2] In this iteration Olunike Adeliyi adopts a similar lead role to Rollins, playing the mysterious recluse with a talent for violence. Noah Dalton Danby and Michelle Nolden form an amusing duo as the film's main antagonists, whilst Peter MacNeill and Kiana Madeira also defy common tropes in their roles as the grizzled detective and innocent bystander.
Despite the positive reception of He Never Died, currently holding an 87% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes, a direct follow-up failed to come to life.[3] Writer-director Jason Krawczyk hoped to expand the character with a miniseries adaption and follow-up film, but after the endeavour had been cancelled Krawczyk’s script was surprisingly repurposed to install a new character in the same universe.[4]
Main Cast
Olunike Adeliyi as Lacey
Peter MacNeill as Godfrey
Kiana Madeira as Suzzie
Michelle Nolden as Meredith
Noah Dalton Danby as Terrance
Edsson Morales as Jerry
Katie Messina as Janice
Murray Furrow as Vaughn
Lawrence Gowan as Man in the Hat
Nick Stojanovic as Driver Dan
Plot Summary
The film opens to a city plagued by human-trafficking, where an inhumanly strong Lacey enters to foil a late-night abduction, devouring the attacker in a flood of screams and allowing the victim to flee.
A tired and aging Detective Godfrey leaves the police department to continue his one-man investigation of a comfortably sinister character (Terrance), whom he suspects to be in charge of a trafficking operation. He takes up a surveillance post in an abandoned warehouse district where a dishevelled Lacey has also been waiting for the suspect to arrive. With apparent disregard of the detective’s presence, she forces entrance in the compound. Inside, a young man is being forced into a game of Russian roulette between himself and a chained dog for the entertainment of a live-streamed audience. Lacey interrupts to kill the man and savagely remove his eyes for a snack, apparently unaffected by a gunshot to the head. The man behind the camera flees to find his boss, Terrance, engaged in his own game of torture. Both returning to the scene they find the body dismembered and the incident recorded; meanwhile Lacey leaves frustrated, ignoring Godfrey as he enters to discover what has happened.
Similar to He Never Died, the antisocial Lacey finds refuge in a boring diner, seeking only oatmeal and tea. With Godfrey at home in disbelief, Terrance seeks to verify his own disbelief by showing the footage to his boss and sibling, Meredith. The pair, comically comfortable in their criminal enterprise, plot to capture Lacey to profit off her abilities. The next day Godfrey returns to find Lacey and the two decide to talk at the diner, Lacey is forthcoming about her cannibalistic needs that she satisfies only by eating evil people; in this case, Terrance. Godfrey realises Lacey is his only hope in exacting retribution so he offers he up targets in exchange for a place to stay. And so Lacey promptly finds and kills two of these targets in a suspicious apartment, after conferring with Godfrey she returns to release their detainee, Suzzie. Though initially afraid, Suzzie follows Lacey to the diner, in awe of her abilities. The bubbly Suzzie is intent on staying with Lacey and becoming her friend.
Godfrey heads off to investigate the apartment, where Terrance finds and captures him, winding up strapped to a chair in the company of Meredith. After a casual conversation she then leaves Terrance to interrogate Godfrey for Lacey’s whereabouts. Terrance and a crony then track down Lacey, who is indifferent to being beaten and captured, taking her back to their compound to be heavily restrained. Suzzie, who has witnessed Lacey’s abduction seeks Godfrey’s help at the police department where only the desk sergeant is concerned enough to help; all the while the criminal siblings are beginning to experiment on Lacey for their amusement. A concerned and reckless Suzzie finds a way into the compound, passing through a party for the rich and powerful before finding and freeing Godfrey. Together they attempt to rescue an impaled Lacey who instead erupts into a rage of power to decapitate Terrance and wreak havoc on the party, concluding in Meredith being thrown of the rooftop.
Much later a retired Terrance runs into Lacey at the laundromat, during a friendly farewell they exchange first names revealing Lacey to really be Lilith. After Godfrey leaves the haunting man in the hat finally appears clearly to Lacey, so she addresses her frustration about immortality to him, assuming him to be God. The film ends foreboding an apocalypse, as revealed to Godfrey at home by yet another bulletproof character.
Mythology
The incomplete Never Died universe now features at least two immortals. In He Never Died Henry Rollins’ Jack reveals himself to be the Cain of biblical legend, though he laments the incorrect pronunciation. In his story he argues with the silent man in the hat who has punished with immortality, presumably for the murder of his brother Abel. This aligns with the narrative in the book of Genesis, Chapter 4, where Cain becomes the first person to commit murder and is subsequently condemned to “…be a restless wanderer on the earth.”[5] This story has been widely interpreted between the Abrahamic Religions; in regards to the Christian tradition and its influence on Western thinking, the subject of Cain’s immortality was not prominent until the Romantic Poets of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century sought to reinterpret early biblical stories in spite of tradition, mostly inspired by Milton’s Paradise Lost.[6] Byron’s Cain and Coleridge’s The Wanderings particularly deal with the story of Cain, playing heavily on themes of mortality. As for Jack’s/Cain’s apparent invincibility (to be considered in conjuction with his his immortality, following God’s punishment of Cain he promises to protect him so that “…so that no one who found him would kill him” and this promise is realised as the Mark of Cain, which is interpreted both as a mercy and a curse.[5][7] The influence of these writers may not be obvious but they contribute to our understanding of the character Cain, which we use as a reference to make popular media adaptions that fit with our current hero archetypes. This can be seen where the US series Lucifer creates a similar depiction of Cain as a bulletproof immortal and their main antagonist in season 3.
The interpretations of Lilith are even more varied with many conflicting reports between Abrahamic traditions as well as other parallel mythologies using similar names. Of particular interest is the Alphabet of Ben Sira, which is a text that puts forth a narrative to account for the apparent inconsistency between the creation of “male and female” in Genesis 1:27 and the creation of Eve in Genesis 2:22.[8] The implication is that there must have been another woman created before Eve, Adam’s ‘first wife’, and that there must have been a need to create another after her and for her to be from the rib of Adam and thus his lesser. Presumably, this is because their equal status (since they were created at the same time in the same manner) was not agreeable for Adam, or more pertinently, for those who wanted to preserve an unequal status between Adam and Eve, and hence man and woman.[8] And so the story opens up to interpretation, with Lilith, refusing to submit to Adam, cast out into the world perhaps to be a wanderer like Cain later was and to suffer mercy/curse of never dying. This would serve the Never Died character adaptions and might more clearly implicate the man in the hat as God, the executor of their punishment and perhaps also the one saving them for some ultimate purpose; it is very much open to speculation.
After plucking characters form the first book of the bible, Genesis, it looks as though future instalments will draw from the last book, Revelations. Right before the credits roll a line of motorcycles is seen with number plates R EV6 12, REV 634, REV6-56, and RE-V678; presumably referencing Chapter 6, verses 1 to 8 in pairs, which describe the coming of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse; each pair of verses corresponds to a rider.
Reception
Critical Response
She Never Died currently holds an approval rating of 100% and 25% on Rotten Tomatoes, from 9 critical reviews and 8 audience reviews, respectively.[9] The relatively low number of ratings so far not only fail to give an accurate approval rating but also indicate low viewership; one can reasonably assume that films with few ratings on arguably the world’s most referenced rating site have not been widely distributed. However, the movie site IMDb offers more data with a weighted average from 472 users, giving a score of 4.9 out of 10.[10] Ian Sedensky of Culture Crypt gave the film an 80/100, summarising it as “…an updated, unusual experience in abnormality whose mundane moments are punctuated by sparks of savage horror and slow strokes of deadpan humour.”[11]
| Year | Ceremony | Category | Nominee | Result |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2019 | ||||
| Another Hole in the Head Genre Film Festival | Audience Award | Audrey Cummings | Won | |
| Blood in the Snow Canadian Film Festival | Best Actress | Olunike Adeliyi | Won | |
| Vanguard Award | Audrey Cummings | Won | ||
| New York City Horror Film Festival | Best Director | Won | ||
| Nightmares Film Festival | Best Thriller Feature | Nominated | ||
| Best Cinematography Feature | Ian Macmillan | Nominated | ||
| Best Actress Feature | Olunike Adeliyi | Nominated |
References
- ^ "She Never Died (2019)". IMDb. Retrieved 25 October 2020.
- ^ Knight, Chris. "Chris Knight: She Never Died is a 'sister sequel' that stands up nicely on its own". National Post. Retrieved 25 October 2020.
- ^ "He Never Died". Rotten Tomatoes. Retrieved 25 October 2020.
- ^ Hermanns, Grant. "Exclusive: Henry Rollins Reflects on He Never Died & Repurposed Sequel". Coming Soon. Retrieved 25 October 2020.
- ^ a b "Genesis 4 – New International Version (NIV)". The International Bible Society. Retrieved 28 October 2020.
- ^ Cantor, Paul (1980). "Byron's "Cain": A Romantic Version of the Fall". The Kenyon Review. 2 (3): 50.
- ^ Davis, Cara (2012). "Cain in early nineteenth-century literature: Traditional biblical stories revised to encompass contemporary advances in science". Iowa State University Capstones, Theses and Dissertations: 47.
- ^ a b Koisor, Wojciech (2018). "A Tale of Two Sisters: The Image of Eve in Early Rabbinic Literature and Its Influence on the Portrayal of Lilith in the Alphabet of Ben Sira". Nashim: A Journal of Jewish Women’s Studies & Gender Issues. 32 (112): 117; 121. doi:10.2979/nashim.32.1.10.
- ^ "She Never Died". Rotten Tomatoes. Retrieved 28 October 2020.
- ^ "User Ratings". IMDb. Retrieved 28 October 2020.
- ^ Sedensky, Ian. "She Never Died (2019)". Culture Crypt. Retrieved 28 October 2020.