Do Not Disturb

I knew ten minutes in to Do Not Disturb I wasn't going to come out with a favorable opinion of it. The only question was how low would it fall. All the way to the bottom I loathe this movie. Deeply, utterly, with every fiber of my being. Let's knock off the small complaints first, starting with the visual direction. The story is about a couple honeymooning in Miami and their descent into madness after taking some peyote while there. Let me repeat part of that sentence: the story is about a couple honeymooning IN MIAMI. You know, the city in southern Florida known for beautiful beaches, the sun rising over the Pacific Ocean, palm trees, a vibrant night life, and rich with a mixture of Hispanic and Caribbean culture? NONE OF THAT IS ON DISPLAY HERE. At least 75% of this movie takes place in a hotel room, and not a palatial honeymoon suite. We're talking the kind of basic, $65-a-night hotel room you'd find in a Holiday Inn. All the ambiance of an overnight business trip to Columbus, Ohio explodes across the screen! And you'd think that a movie about two people having their lives altered and ruined by a peyote trip would include some mind-warping visuals, like over-saturated colors, kaleidoscopic swirls, wild hallucinations, and so on. Other than some "was that plate there before", Do Not Disturb treats the peyote high like losing your keys or spacing out. How about the dialogue? This movie works the f-bomb like Rocky works the slab of beef in the freezer. I feel like there was some kind of bet to include it in no less than every third sentence. It makes the lyrics to any NWA song sound like Longfellow. The overall script isn't any better, especially the third act, where you will be calling out the movie for either being as dumb as a sack of hammers, or assuming you are, because there is some severe, political-grade BS going on here. Without spoiling it (although most plot summaries online spoil a lot of the plot anyway), let's just say you'll learn that this movie thinks cleaning up a crime scene is easier than doing the dishes. The soundtrack is an abrasive squall of dubstep and dance techno that uses what I assume to be pop songs that never fit the moment, but are always a few notches higher than even Spinal Tap would enjoy. If I live another 50 years and never hear that BWAMMMM descending note again, my heart will explode with joy. I'd rather hear gunshots in my neighborhood. But those are minor irritations. Grievances. Pet peeves. Do Not Disturb's fatal, insurmountable flaw is its two lead characters, Chloe and Jack. They are unbearable, as individuals and as a couple. Here is a bullet point list of some of their worst attributes: • Jack and Chloe both appear to be in their late 30’s, and yet both do hard drugs with the reckless abandon of a 20 year old at Coachella. • Jack tried to sleep with Chloe’s best friend at some point, and only didn’t go through with it because he couldn’t maintain an erection. He’s mad that Chloe’s friend spilled the beans about it, and she picks at him about it, assuming the guilt was eating at him. This is after they party with another couple and she watches Jack start to get oral sex from the wife in the other couple. He is clearly not monogamous, and she makes excuses for it. • Six months prior to the events of the movie, Chloe got pregnant. She told Jack it was an accident. She confesses to the woman from the couple who nearly gives Jack a blowjob not ten minutes later than she lies about it being an accident. So, she tried to trap Jack with a pregnancy. • Jack and Chloe have been together for years. Jack isn’t supportive of what Chloe wants to do with her life, and seems to want nothing more than to party, have sex, and get by. Chloe wants to better herself, but she expects Jack to grow up, a thing she should’ve realized is impossible by now, so she nags and needles and starts arguments. THESE ARE THE PROTAGONISTS. This is who you're stuck watching for 90 minutes. They are terrible, manipulative, abusive, co-dependent train wrecks, they are the centerpiece of the movie, and they are supposed to be on their honeymoon. They argue within minutes of the movie starting. They argue about whether or not to try for another pregnancy (how have you not had this discussion yet?), they argue about when to have sex (it's your honeymoon, it should naturally be 30% of your daily activities), they argue about how much to indulge in drugs (she doesn't tell him not to, just to go easy, which, WHAT), they argue about everything possible. They even argue while high on peyote! High school debate teams do less arguing. The only times they aren't arguing is when circumstances force them to divert their attention to something else, like the random stranger that babbles and screams at them on the beach, throws peyote at them, and then walks into the ocean and never re-surfaces. From the first interaction between them, you wonder why they even went through with it, because their relationship is a shambling zombie waiting for a bullet to the brain. They are insufferable and obnoxious, but worse, they are unsympathetic, and for a story like this to work, there needs to be sympathy, so their descent into madness comes off like a tragedy. Having them be toxic from the start doesn't gives the audience anywhere to go emotionally, and because they're equally terrible individually, you can't even get invested in one side of the story for the sake of exploring a theme. If this was presented as a black comedy in the vein of Very Bad Things, this might have had a chance at not being in the discussion for one of the worst movies I've seen out of the 2500 I've logged, but it doesn't even attempt to consider it. Jack and Chloe are, hands down, some of the worst characters to ever be the focal point of a movie, and the movie around them wants to bury you and them alive in a grave of bleakness. No matter how you approach it, Do Not Disturb is a miserable and hopeless experience. It fails to understand the basic requirements of audience investment and character development, not out of ignorance but defiance. Whatever Do Not Disturb is doing is as intentional as it is inexplicable and intolerable. It does not want you to like the characters, and it does not want you to sympathize with their downfall. Its aggressive defiance should be evident by its title, a declaration to stay away without exception. Do yourself a favor and take the title's advice.