Individually, creature features and survival horror are two of the most watchable subgenres in cinema, whether your personal preferences lean further into nail-biting tension or blood and guts. Taking the two and blending them together in a high concept tale of terror is ingenious, then, with J.D. Dillard’s Sweetheart more than living up to its promise.
Certified Fresh on Rotten Tomatoes with a stellar critical approval rating of 93 percent, the rave reviews and enthusiastic reception would potentially lead you to believe that the movie was either a sleeper hit, a word-of-mouth favorite, or an instant cult classic. Instead, it was sent out into the wilderness with barely a marketing campaign to speak of, and fell through the cracks as a result.
Not even seeing the inside of a theater, Sweetheart arrived exclusively on streaming and on-demand in October 2019, and never came close to capturing the imagination in the way that it deserved, even though it was backed by the might of the Blumhouse branding, and boasted a tour-de-force central performance from Kiersey Clemons.
Audiences are finally coming around, though, with FlixPatrol revealing that Sweetheart has risen from the depths to crawl onto the sandy shores of the iTunes worldwide watch-list. Simple in plot but phenomenal in execution, Clemons’ shipwreck survivor finds herself trapped on a deserted island, which of course fails to live up to its uninhabited billing when it transpires there’s a terrifying creature with a thirst for flesh existing as the remote locale’s sole – and very hungry – resident.
