Till Death - review (Netflix)

Brief synopsis: A woman must fight for her life when her husband hatches an elaborate plan to have her killed in revenge for an extra-marital affair.

Is it any good?: Till Death is not good. It could have been, but it is over-complicated, poorly paced. Additionally, Megan Fox, who plays the protagonist, cannot act.

Spoiler territory: Emma (Megan Fox) tells Tom (Aml Ameen) that their affair must end. She cannot do it anymore. Tom, going full simp, tries to persuade her that they have something. She leaves the hotel room.

It is her wedding anniversary. She puts her wedding band on as she drives to meet her husband, Mark (Eoin Macken), at his office.

She has tears in her eyes. Whether they are guilt or regret, is not clear. Mark's assistant (Lili Rich) gives her a bouquet of white roses. Happy anniversary. Emma thanks her. Her expression looks as though she received a parking ticket.

She goes into his office to wait for him. On his desk, there is a police case folder. Mark is an attorney. The case folder has a photograph of a beat-up Emma in it. It is the case folder of the man who assaulted her, Bobby Ray (Callan Mulvey). Bobby Ray does not look like a friendly guy.

She remembers the attack, how he stabbed her in the back. Her reverie is interrupted by Mark. He remarks on her dress. He thought she would wear the red one, his favourite. She felt like something different.

He ignores her, saying she can change on the way. So much for women's rights. She asks why he has the file on her case. He tells her that Bobby Ray's had his parole revoked. She should not be looking at the file. It could trigger her anxiety.

She does not seem overly anxious; she looks bored. They leave the office, stepping into the elevator. The miserable couple stands beside one another, lost in differing thoughts.

The elevator stops. Sam gets on. Seeing Mark, he greets him with deference, being one of his subordinates. He does not acknowledge Emma. Subtle.

Mark asks if he has met his wife, turning to Emma. Sam, understandably, lies. No, he has never met her. Emma, the brazen hussy, points out they met at the Christmas party. Sam, not wanting to look like a punk, pretends to recall it.

Mark, ominously, says they did not meet at the Christmas party. Both Emma and Sam look as though they are about to shit their pants. They met at the holiday party. Mark is enjoying their discomfort a little too much.

Mark and Emma head to a restaurant to celebrate their anniversary, relations between them remaining challenging. Emma is in her red dress.

A waitress asks if they would like dessert. Emma declines. Mark, in a particularly alpha move, orders dessert for both of them. He then slides a jewellery box over to Emma.

She was not expecting a gift. It's a surprise. It is a steel necklace. Steel, not silver or platinum. Steel. The man is a successful attorney and buys his wife a steel necklace. She does not see any alarm bells, remarking that it is beautiful.

Elsewhere in the restaurant, a man (Julian Balahurov) proposes to his girlfriend (Stefanie Rozhko). She tearfully accepts. There is celebratory applause from the other patrons. Truthfully, the man is old enough to be her grandfather.

Anyhoo, Mark comments on how, not long ago, that was her. She gives him a gift; tickets for the Superbowl. With a breathtaking lack of grace, he rejects the tickets.

Mark has another surprise for her. He has put a blindfold in her pocket. Not the most exciting present and, given their frosty relationship, should have sounded some alarm bells. It does not.

He takes the now blindfolded Emma for a drive. She gets agitated, removing the blindfold an hour into the journey. They are on the way to the lake house. It is the dead of winter, with snow and ice all around.

At the lake house, Emma has the blindfold on again. She is counting to one hundred. Removing the blindfold, she sees that he has set out the house romantically; rose petals on the ground; candles, secret messages.

She finds him in the bedroom, holding a couple of flutes of champagne. He apologises for the state of their relationship; It has not been going well for a while. That's good enough for her. He's getting action.

Emma wakes in the morning to find Mark sitting up. He has handcuffed her to him. Confused, she calls to him. Mark turns to her and says it is time to wake up. He commits suicide, shooting himself in the head.

A blood-splattered Emma is, understandably, shocked. Attached to his bloody and disfigured corpse, she looks at her options. She will call somebody. Nope. He thought of that; no phone line. Use the gun to shoot off the handcuff? There was only one bullet in the gun. He blew his brains out with it.

Emma drags his body to the top of the stairs. She needs to go downstairs. Not thinking it through, she pulls him to the top of the stairs, promptly crashing down the steps under his weight.

She goes to the kitchen but Mark, the fiend, has thought of everything. There are no utensils; no way for her to separate from her recently deceased spouse.

She finds the car keys and drags dead Mark to the garage, which is outside the main house. Because he has left her with no clothes, including no footwear. Not only must she contend with his non-cooperative bodyweight, but also the freezing weather.

She gets to the car and attempts to drive away. That would be too easy; he has drained the tank. He left her a message in the car.

He knows about her affair with Tom, though it was not the reason he committed suicide. The suicide worked with his plan. She has no idea what that plan is. She goes back to the house.

Emma tries to remove the necklace after washing the blood off her face. It will not come off. A frustrated Emma rages at his hypocrisy. A still dead, Mark, does not react.

Tom turns up at the house. After an initial reluctance, Emma opens the door to him and explains what has happened. He tells her that Mark was about to be arrested for tampering with multiple cases. Hence the suicide.

Tom has left his mobile charging in his car. As he goes to retrieve it, a car is pulling up to the house. He tells Emma to go back in the house and lock the door.

Jimmy (Jack Roth) purports to be a plumber. He has come to fix the pipes. Tom tells him that it will not be possible to do the job at that time, he is happy to pay him for his time.

Jimmy is determined to enter the house, coming up with myriad reasons to be let in. Tom gets aggressive, insisting that he leave. Jimmy did not come alone. Bobby Ray is Jimmy's brother. he is not as patient as his younger sibling.

He stabs Tom, killing him, much to the distress of his brother. Bobby calms him down. They need to search the house and find Emma. Emma's movement is still somewhat restricted by having to drag a corpse around.

Somehow, she manages to evade the two hapless brothers and get to the boathouse. In the boathouse, Emma frees herself from her dead deadbeat husband by cutting off his thumb.

The brothers almost find her. Almost. They find Mark's body. Bobby tells Jimmy that it was Mark who gave him the job. Jimmy recognises Mark as the person who put Bobby in prison.

Bobby wants the money. he also wants revenge. Jimmy looks at the safe. It needs a thumbprint and a combination to open. Jimmy thinks the job is too much trouble and wants to leave. His brother wants the fortune.

He tells Jimmy to get the corpse. He will find Emma. After some more cat-and-mouse antics, Bobby captures Emma. Not before she can make a call to the police.

Bobby wants the combination to the safe. Emma does want to give it to him, knowing it is the only thing keeping her alive. Bobby believes he can coax the combination out of her by giving her an incentive. He threatens to cut off her toes.

Jimmy, exasperated by his brother's penchants for violence, prevents him from carrying out his threat. He points the gun Mark killed himself with at Bobby. He does not know that there are no bullets in the gun.

Jimmy persuades Emma to give him the code. Bobby opens the safe; it is empty with only a message left in it. The diamonds are close to Emma's heart. The diamonds are in the necklace.

She tries to remove the necklace, but it has no clasp. Bobby, eager to exact retribution on Emma, realises that Mark wants them to cut her head off. He has no problem with that.

His violence averse brother is opposed to that option, causing the two brothers to fight. Jimmy gets killed during the altercation. Bobby, not one for rational thought or discourse, blames Emma.

He attacks her. First, trying to shoot her with the unloaded gun, then the two wrestle on the ground. Emma manages to escape, but not before he stabs her in the leg. She manages to handcuff Bobby to Mark.

Bobby relentlessly pursues Emma dragging Mark's corpse. They end up on the lake fighting. The ice breaks, Bobby is dragged down by Mark's corpse but not before grabbing Emma.

In the icy waters below the surface, the two struggle once more. Emma manages to grab the knife Bobby wants to kill her with and stabs him in the eye.

Freed from his grasp, she escapes to the surface. Sirens blare as the police head to the lakehouse. The end.

Final thoughts: Till Death is a moderately entertaining film let down by a weak central performance. Written by Jason Carvey and directed by S. K. Dale, the film looks good and has a good premise.

The film moves too slowly, the pacing exposing Fox's thespian shortcomings. Everybody else on show is good. Even Macken makes the underwritten role of Mark work.

Unfortunately, Fox is the driving force of the film. Though not unwatchable, her expressiveness seems only able to cover sullen or miffed. One is never fully invested in her battle.

The underwritten script makes elements of the story muddled, taking away from the main story.

At eighty-eight minutes long, Till Death is not a long film, it just takes too long to get going. The downside is it tries to stuff too much into the conclusion.

If you like Megan Fox, you might enjoy Till Death. For non-Fox fans, there is not much to recommend this film.