Till Death | Film Synopsis & Review
Marriage is a very complicated concept and practice. It requires two people to give up a part of themselves in order to live in peace and harmony. Now, for some, this is not a big deal but for others this is quite difficult. Not everyone, men and women alike, are ready to give up certain aspects of their lives, personality or routine for someone they believe they love. Truth be told, there are some that have no intention of giving up anything; there are those that only seek power and control in a marriage and label said control as their idea of love. This concept is explored in the 2021 psychological drama/thriller Till Death starring Megan Fox.
Written by Jason Carvey and directed by S.K. Dale, Till Death is a thriller that puts a woman, Fox, in the middle of a sick game devised by her husband who wants to not only punish her for her infidelity but also drag her down in his own misery. The film starts with Emma, Fox, getting dressed in a fancy hotel room with a man who is not her husband named Tom, played by Aml Ameen. Although we are brought into the end of their affair, it is implied that they have been sleeping together for quite some time. Emma ends up telling Tom that she wants to break it off, which he is initially upset about. She explains to Tom that she wants to try and make things work with her husband Mark. Although upset, Tom is understanding of her decision and begs her for just one more night together. Emma declines and says she can’t because that next night is her anniversary. The day of their anniversary, Emma surprises Mark at his office. Mark, Eoin Macken, is a lawyer but used to be a state prosecutor. In fact, Mark actually met Emma in his prosecutorial days when she was violently attacked by a man when she was wrapping up a freelance photo shoot. Mark worked with Emma to put her attacker in prison. Once she healed from her wounds, physically and somewhat emotionally, they began dating and subsequently married shortly after that. I’m not sure if this is a breach of ethics, but I’m pretty sure it would be a bad look for a prosecutor to date the victim of an assault case he was trying.
Once Emma makes her way to Mark’s office, he is not there but she sees a file on his desk. She picks it up and recognizes it as her case file from when she was assaulted. From here we get a little flashback of her attack and how she got away by stabbing her attacker in the eye with her car key. While reminiscing, Mark sneaks up on her, which prompts her to drop the file. Mark eyes the file and, when Emma asks about it, he says he’s just wrapping up some things with it because her attacker is up for parole. Emma is visibly worried but shakes it off. When he asks what she’s doing there, Emma says she wanted to surprise him for their anniversary. Mark seems endeared by this but comments that she is not wearing his favorite dress. Emma says she wanted to try something different for him and, just when you think he’s dropped the topic, he kisses her and says they still have plenty of time to head home so she can change before dinner. Keep this scene in mind because this behavior explains a lot of what will transpire later in the film.
That night they head to a fancy restaurant for their 10th anniversary. Apparently, the 10th anniversary is the steel year so Mark gives Emma a steel chain necklace. In return, Emma gives him Super Bowl tickets but he doesn’t seem to really care. In fact, when they leave the restaurant, he leaves the tickets on their table. This is a huge sign that Mark doesn’t plan on being around long enough to go to the Super Bowl. Before they leave the restaurant though, they talk about how distant they’ve been with each other and Mark promises that he will do better. While they talk, Emma notices the entire restaurant clapping for a young woman who was just proposed to by her older boyfriend. Seeing this reminds Emma of her own situation with Mark and she excuses herself to the bathroom. While in the bathroom she runs into the newly engaged woman, crying. Emma walks up to her and tells her to remember that nothing is permanent. Basically, Emma tried to tell her she still has a choice and doesn’t have to give up her independence for a man. Although Emma was speaking truth, the young woman tells her to screw off and walks out of the bathroom.
Later, while Emma and Mark leave the restaurant, Emma believes Mark is driving them home but he ends up surprising her with a trip to their lake house; something Emma was unaware of as she fell asleep in the car. Once they arrive at the lake house, Emma is taken aback by the romantic ambiance. Mark had decorated the place with candles, rose petals leading to the bedroom and even filled a room with photos of the happiest moments of their marriage. Emma is a bit thrown by this but falls into Mark’s whole “new beginnings” schtick. They end up in the upstairs bedroom and have anniversary sex.
The next morning, Emma is woken up by the cold light of day to the sight of Mark sitting up on his side of the bed. She remarks on him being up early but quickly realizes Mark is acting strange. She looks down at her arm and notices she is handcuffed to him. Emma asks what is going on but he just responds with something very ominous then pulls out a gun and shoots himself in the head. Emma is in an instant state of shock and is frozen still. Once she is able to compose herself, Emma attempts to stand up but is pulled to the ground by Mark’s weight. She tries to undo the cuffs and look for keys but no luck. She then takes the gun and tries to shoot the handcuffs off but the gun was only loaded with one bullet. After this, Emma begins thinking rationally. The cabin is quite cold, as it is the middle of winter, and the only thing she is wearing is thin lingerie. Emma goes to the bedroom closet, dragging Mark along with her, to try to find some clothes but the only thing in it is her wedding dress. Emma then removes Mark’s clothes and puts them on herself. Things only get more challenging from here when she heads downstairs, using the dress as a way to move Mark around a little easier, to find that her phone is submerged in water, all the tools and knives that could used to take off the cuffs have been removed from the house and the room full of photos displaying their happiest moments now only has pictures of Emma cheating on him with Tom. There is also a large photo of Emma’s bloody and beaten face from her police file hanging on the wall.
There is also a tape recording in the room of Mark taunting Emma saying that he knew about her affair and that she should have been worshipping at his feet for all he did for her; he’s basically implying everything that’s happening to her was all her fault. From here, Emma makes her way out to the car in the garage, dragging Mark the entire way through the bitter cold and snow. Once she reaches the car and fires up the ignition, she and Mark’s wedding song blares out from the radio and then she hears yet another recording from Mark, taunting her once again. After the recording stops, the car dies. It seems as though Mark siphoned all the gas out of the car so Emma would have no way to escape. Things only get more complicated when Tom shows up. Emma is both confused and a bit relieved to see him. Wondering what he’s doing there, Tom becomes confused because he said he got a message from her saying she “F**ked up and needs help”. Considering everything that happened that morning, Emma deduces that this was all a part of Mark’s plan. She correctly comes to this assumption when Tom tells her what’s been going on with Mark at work. Apparently, Mark was about to be arrested for evidence tampering in a few cases he was involved with at the firm. Upon hearing this, Emma invites Tom into the house, as they had been talking at the front door. Once he walks in, Tom is shocked by the sight of her being handcuffed to a dead Mark. He immediately suggests they call the police but Emma says that wouldn’t be a wise idea. With their affair and how everything looks, the police would assume they plotted to murder him. Tom still believes they could explain their situation to the police but Emma tells him this is all part of Mark’s sick game and poses the obvious question “Did you really think Mark sent that message so that you could come and save me?”.
As this starts to sink in for Tom, a truck pulls into the driveway. Two men get out of the truck and Tom tells Emma to hide. He meets the men outside and asks what they’re doing there. The younger of the two says they’re handymen hired by the owner of the house to do some work. Tom thanks them for coming out but says their services are no longer needed. The younger one insists that they do the work but Tom dismisses him and says he’ll pay them for coming all the way out there. The younger one struggles to make another excuse when, suddenly, the older man pulls out a knife and stabs Tom in the stomach. Emma peaks out to see what is going on and she immediately identifies the older man as her attacker who beat and stabbed her. Mark clearly had no intention of being arrested and let Emma live happily ever after with her secret lover, oh no. He wanted her to suffer. We find this out when the two men, her attacker and his younger brother, enter the house and speak of them being hired to steal diamonds Mark had in a safe in the house. When the younger brother asks why he would do this for the guy who put him in prison for several years, the attacker responds with “We found common ground”.
Emma, still hiding in the house, hears this and sneaks out to the garage. Emma is quite resourceful as she tries to siphon gas from the parked motor boat so she can fill up the car’s tank. She almost finishes filling the tank when the two men come out to check the garage. She is able to avoid detection by cutting off Mark’s arm that she’s handcuffed to and hiding in the boat. Eventually, Emma is caught when she tries to escape in Tom’s car and her attacker knocks her out and drags her into the house. When she comes to, Emma finds herself once again shackled to Mark. The younger brother attempts to open the safe while her attacker tries to get the code out of Emma. After the younger brother says he can’t get into the safe because the lock pad is too strong, Emma’s attacker elects to smack the code out of her. She swears she doesn’t know it but she ends up giving them a few numbers and then correctly guesses the code is the date they were married. Once the younger brother gets the safe open, they do not find diamonds but they do find a steel hacksaw and a note that reads “The treasure you seek lays close to her heart”. All three of them quickly realize that the diamonds are hidden in the steel necklace Mark gave her for their anniversary. Emma tries to take it off but realizes she can’t. Her attacker picks up the hacksaw and deduces that the only way to get the necklace off is to remove her head from her body. The younger brother attempts to stave him off by using some of his tools to remove the necklace, but nothing seems to work. Becoming very impatient, the attacker tells his brother he will chop off her head. You see, this act is quite personal for the attacker as he blames Emma for all the bad things that happened in his life when he was locked up. The younger brother tries to stop him but he’s listening to reason. The attacker doesn’t appreciate being confronted with his own failures so he and his brother start to fight. As their fight gets more heated, the attacker accidentally pushes his brother into a wall and his head is jammed into a coat hook in the process.
Although he could clearly see this was his fault, he turns to Emma and begins to blame her. As he approaches her, with every intention of relieving her of her head, Emma stabs him in his one good eye. While the two men were fighting, Emma used one of the younger brothers’ tools to pick the lock on the handcuffs. As the attacker screams in agony, Emma handcuffs him to Mark’s dead body and makes a run for it. The attacker follows her and it all culminates in a showdown outside on the icy lake where they both fall into the freezing water. Emma is able to climb her way out and the attacker drowns. Emma, lying on the ice, removes her wedding ring and it rolls into the hole that is now the attacker’s watery grave.
This film is not only a commentary on the complexities of marriage but also the inability to take responsibility for one’s own actions. Although Emma was cheating on Mark, it is heavily implied that Mark was also cheating on her; Emma yells at Mark’s dead body at one point about having to wash the glitter and lipstick off of his shorts sometimes. Mark was also engaged in illegal activity at work and instead of coming clean and facing the consequences, he decided to take a very selfish way out and drag as many people down with him as he could. Mark is the perfect example of a man who blames everyone else for his problems. Instead of doing what he could to make things work with Emma, he emotionally abused and controlled her. Hell, the reason they even got together in the first place was that Mark took advantage of Emma in her most fragile state and lured her in with a false sense of security. This is the reason why Emma began to resent him after a while. When they married, Mark was a prosecutor protecting innocent victims like herself but, when he joined a private practice, he began representing people like the man who attacked her. Emma realized that the “Good Guy” act was just that, an act; she saw up close just who Mark really was and it became very clear to her that she was stuck.
With this in mind, I believe Emma’s affair with Tom was an attempt to get some sense of power or freedom in her situation. Her affair made her feel like she had some control and independence in her life. Although her circumstance was understandable, Emma is not that innocent in all of this. Not only taking into account her affair but also the fact that she never stood up to Mark and expressed her true feelings about things make her just as culpable as he. Neither one was all in for their marriage and opted not to share a life with each other. They both decided to hide secrets and lie to each other. Where things take turn in all this is during the anniversary dinner; Emma called off her affair with Tom and bought Mark a very considerate anniversary gift. She was also sincere in her conversation with Mark about them being distant and wanting to patch things up. It wasn’t until Emma faced her demons and came to the realization that she was only controlled by Mark and not loved by him that she was able to break free from her metaphorical shackles, as well as her real ones. On the opposite end is Mark and her attacker. Mark was manipulative and emotionally abusive towards Emma. He never really loved her or even saw her as her own person, he only wanted to possess her. Mark was so devoid of Emma’s humanity that he only really saw her as an object; putting that irremovable steel necklace on her was his way of locking her into his sick game and showing her that, even after death, he was still going to own her and seal her fate the way he saw fit. Mark always had the upper hand and only showed his true colors after he took his own life. He blamed Emma for everything that went wrong in his life since they met. Although it was Mark who cheated, Mark who decided to participate in illegal activity and Mark who was about to be arrested for said activity, he took it upon himself to put all of that on Emma. The attacker suffers from the same sense of delusion when it comes to blame. Although he was the one who decided to stab and beat Emma in an attempt to rob her, he blames her for his father dying while he was in prison and his family suffering financially. Even when he accidentally kills his brother during their fight, he still blames her. It’s as if he was saying “If only you (Emma) had died when I robbed you, you wouldn’t have been able to ID me, I wouldn’t have gone to prison and I would have been able to help my family with their financial problems”. The attacker’s inability to take responsibility for his own actions is what eventually led to his demise. Had he simply let go of his anger in prison and dealt with the fact that all the events leading up to his arrest were his fault, this whole mess at the lake house wouldn’t have happened. Unfortunately, just like Mark, Emma’s attacker was so consumed with his own selfishness that he was physically incapable of blaming himself.
Till Death is a surprisingly entertaining film. What surprised me most was Megan Fox’s performance. I, like most who only knew her when she was under the tyrannical reign of Michael Bay, only saw her as a sexy lamp. I didn’t really think she was capable of such complex acting until I re-watched Jennifer’s Body a few years ago. In a new understanding of the film, I found her acting to be quite compelling and her performance in this film is no exception. Her natural reactions to obstacles thrown at her and the way she handles her dialogue is both realistic and raw. Fox’s physical acting is top notch as well. The majority of this film shows her character dragging around the dead body of her husband, which Fox did for real as the dummy the filmmakers originally wanted to use seemed too fake for the camera so they had a stunt man play the role of the corpse. Fox shines in this role and gives a convincing performance of a fed up wife stuck in her husband’s cruel game of selfish revenge who fights to break away from the metaphorical and physical chains he kept her locked up with. I also enjoyed the subtle commentary they had about the nature of a marriage in this film. Marriage is a very complicated institution and not all of them are perfect. Both parties have to be in it together and share with one another, but Mark was only interested in himself and his belongings aka Emma. Emma tried to make things work but realized she couldn’t be in a marriage where the man who is supposed to be her partner only wanted to own her; essentially keeping her on display like a doll he can dress and manipulate. I find it interesting that everything that transpired in this film highlights this viewpoint and shows Emma finding her inner strength and breaking free. This film is a wildly entertaining, psychological thrill ride that I highly recommend adding to this year’s spooky season viewing experience.
