Suicide Club (2017) – Film Review
Suicide Club is a slow-ticking psychological horror film set in London. The central character is a young woman called Liz Banning (Clayton), who lives in an upper-storey flat. Liz hasn’t left her home for several years and relies on home delivery services to bring her groceries and other essentials. However, when her shopping arrives, there are no face-to-face interactions with the delivery drivers. The door is always locked and Liz no longer has the key. The drivers have to toss her shopping through the upper section of the kitchen window, which Liz usually keeps covered, contributing to the overall dinginess of her home.
Although she never goes out, Liz often spies on her neighbours through a pair of binoculars, but spends most of her time online. Perhaps not surprisingly due to the way she lives her life, Liz is a member of a suicide forum and has made multiple failed attempts to end her own life.
After her last botched attempt to kill herself, Liz gets a message from a fellow forum member telling her about the Suicide Club, a website where death is the one thing they guarantee. When Liz tries to find the site, she can’t and finally resorts to searching the dark web. Even then, the site is hard to find and, just as she is beginning to believe the Suicide Club is an internet hoax, she manages to make contact. That’s when her real troubles begin.
After a brief interaction via a question and answer session, Liz is unable to sever ties with the site, which appears to have installed some form of malware on her computer because the site regularly opens a window on her screen showing videos of people killing themselves. In addition to the suicide footage, the site keeps serving Liz a kill allocation sheet that gives her the option to nominate herself:
“SURVIVE OR DIE”
“THE CHOICE IS YOURS”
“KILL OR BE KILLED – NOMINATE THE NEXT SUICIDE”
Instead of nominating herself, Liz enters the name and postcode of one of her neighbours, a junkie who stole her phone after she dropped it from the window. Not long after this, Liz sees three figures wearing hoodies heading for her junkie neighbour’s door. All three of them are wearing cloth masks which cover their faces completely. At this point Liz hacks her own phone, can see inside her neighbour’s flat, and witnesses the intruders deliver a fatal overdose, making it obvious many of the deaths published on the site are murders, not suicides.
Much of the film centres on Liz’s attempts to sever her ties with the Suicide Club, suggesting her initial attempts to kill herself may have been a cry for help.
While all this is happening, Liz becomes obsessed with a new neighbour called Josh (Newington) and after spying on him through her binoculars makes contact with him online. Their online chats progress to telephone conversations and video calls. Then Josh starts visiting her by crawling through the kitchen window. Although there is no romantic or sexual interaction between the two, it’s obvious there is two-way attraction and Liz has more to live for than ever.
Watching the relationship between Liz and Josh develop, helps keep the film interesting. As does Liz’s attempts to link her building’s caretaker to a string of abductions and murders. After the junkie’s death, Liz also has to contend with visits and telephone calls from a plain-clothes police officer who thinks she may know something about her neighbour’s “apparent suicide”, so there’s a lot going on.
Klariza Clayton does an excellent job of portraying the reclusive Liz and putting across her damaged personality convincingly. She does this so well that the scenes where Josh succeeds in getting Liz to open up and even smile are all the more striking. It’s like watching someone break free of their chains and begin to climb out of a big, dark hole.
When Liz explains how her personal traumas brought her to her present situation, Josh sits and listens patiently, offering positive advice. It’s like being a fly on the wall at a counselling session but the scene works well in the context of the film and Clayton and Newington make an excellent team. However, many viewers may find Suicide Club a little too slow-moving, while others may consider it isn’t dark enough ranking it more of a thriller than a horror film.
Although a lot of people appear to hate the film, it’s not that bad. It’s likely that many viewers with negative things to say were expecting a much darker film and were disappointed by the lack of blood and gore. If you decide to watch Suicide Club, keep an open mind and concentrate on the plot. It’s a clever idea and, after you know why the online suicide platform exists and how it works, which isn’t revealed until near the end of the film, it becomes a little more unnerving because such a set-up is not beyond the realms of possibility.