Greetings, internet friends! Like many of us, I had a Twilight phase growing up. I was Team Jacob (sorry, Edward), but I was also pretty obsessed with another member of the Cullen family: Jasper Hale (played by Jackson Rathbone).
So, when I found a new horror movie on Amazon Prime with Jackson Rathbone, I knew I had to write about it. Plus, my favorite Degrassi actor (Amanda Arcuri) is also in it! TRULY made for me personally.
It's called Do Not Reply and it's...really something. Here's the trailer and description:
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"Chelsea falls prey to a social media predator. She meets Brad at a Halloween party and is forced to stay in his fortified house with other girls who Brad plans to kill in his virtual reality murders."
So without further ado, here's a recap of the movie and all my thoughts that nobody asked for!
Alright, I...didn't expect that to be the first line of this movie.
Here's our main character Chelsea, her parents, and her sister Kristina. Their dad is away in the army and Chelsea is all sad because she hates Kristina. I thought maybe they were step-siblings, but nah, they're just sisters who really hate each other, I guess.
We're not even five minutes in, but holy crap, Kristina seems like the most insufferable person in the world. No wonder Chelsea hates living with her.
Alright, so Chelsea's friend Mia dragged her to this double date movie night thing. But now she's ditching Chelsea to go hook up with her BF and Chelsea doesn't seem into her date at all.
A couple of days later, Chelsea's in trouble with her mom, she and Mia are fighting, Kristina's still mean, and everything just, like, generally sucks. So she starts messaging with an anonymous guy online named, um..."VRCOWBOY." I'm sure he's totally fine and not a catfish.
This guy says his name is Brad and that he's 17 too, but he won't show Chelsea his face because "his phone camera is broken." Sureeee. They make plans to meet up at this Halloween carnival, and all the alarm bells in my head are going WEEOOH WEEOOH.
Chelsea takes a bus by herself on Halloween night to go meet Brad. She's dressed as a zombie cheerleader and he's dressed as a...zombie football player.
Brad offers her a drink, which I do not trust one bit. Yeah, there's definitely something in there...
Okay, yeah, Brad definitely drugged her. Now he's guiding her around the carnival while she's in a daze, and — did he just throw her in the back of his car?! Holy crap, that escalated quickly.
Chelsea wakes up chained in a creepy basement. Brad's taken off his zombie makeup and now he's calling Chelsea "Sadie." I am confusion.
Wait, there's another girl here too!!! And her name is...Sadie? And she tells Chelsea that her name is also Sadie now? WHY IS EVERYONE NAMED SADIE??
I'm gonna have nightmares about this house. I can't explain why, but for some reason it reminds me of the house from that Cat in the Hat movie.
Meanwhile, we see that Brad has this ridiculously freaky virtual reality helmet, which he uses to act out his killing fantasies.
Okay, so we finally got some answers on this whole "Sadie" thing. I guess Brad had an adoptive sister named Sadie who he was in love with. I'm not really sure what happened to the real Sadie, but I guess now Brad is dressing the girls up to look like his sister. Also, Chelsea's blonde now, guys.
Whoa, there's another girl! She's super injured and can't get out of bed. Chelsea goes to help her, and um...
Now Brad is letting them have "outside time," which is apparently when he lets them use his VR goggles to look at fake ducks. Btw, it looks like there are four girls in the house in total.
Well, at least the food looks good here.
OH, SHIT. BRAD JUST KILLED ONE OF THE GIRLS.
Now he's standing over Chelsea, watching her sleep. I'm getting major Twilight flashbacks.
Things are getting dark now. We learn that the injured girl's real name is Tina and her backstory is really sad. She knows she's not going to survive, so she asks Chelsea to help her find pills to end it all. Chelsea doesn't want to at first, but ends up helping her. But then Brad catches them, and tries to kill them both.
Brad goes to murder Tina, and — wait, Chelsea tells him she wants to kill Tina for him, I guess out of mercy for her. Tina agrees, and Chelsea smothers her with a pillow. Yeah, this got DARK.
Now that Brad trusts Chelsea, he shows her the VR footage of that other girl being killed. He thinks they're "bonding" or whatever, but Chelsea's only flirting with him so she can get on his good side and get TF out of there.
Man, we're down to just two girls now. Does the other girl just, like, not wonder where everyone else went?
Chelsea finally manages to get the other girl to wake up when she shows her the VR footage of the murders. They plan to escape, but before they can even get anywhere, Brad catches them and drags them into his creepy killer lair.
Oh, now we finally get the full backstory on what happened to the real Sadie. We see in a flashback that Brad murdered their mother so that he and Sadie could be together, but then Sadie slit her throat in front of him, saying she would rather die than be with him. YIKES.
Oh, thank god, they managed to escape the evil basement lair and get Brad's keys. But before they can make a run for it...
GET HIM, CHELSEA!!!!
Okay, they escaped! Damn, imagine you're just taking your baby out for a nice morning stroll and two girls in cheerleading uniforms run out covered in blood and screaming.
Honestly, more horror movies should end with everyone getting therapy like this.
Aaaand that's a wrap!!!
Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm gonna go have a drink to try and recover from this. Maybe three.
