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James Wan is one of the biggest influences on 21st century horror.
Saw, Insidious, The Conjuring, and Malignant alone are all regarded as big names in horror. The first three of those have spawned a whopping 21 sequels or spinoffs to date. Just for fun, Wan has also thrown in a Fast & Furious sequel and made Aquaman a respectable comic book movie.
But in the years between Saw’s success and Insidious, Wan was shaping his vision. Trying not to be stuck in an ever-decreasing cycle of schlocky violent horror, Wan began to branch out. Deadly Silence’s puppet-from-hell melodrama is a world away from the grim nastiness of Saw. But with Death Sentence, Wan found the humanity that would help Insidious and The Conjuring connect with audiences so well.
Released in 2007, the same year as Dead Silence, Death Sentence sees a mild-mannered family man and executive Nick Hume (Kevin Bacon) have his life flipped upside down by a horrific event. His son is murdered as part of a gang initiation, and driven by grief and the injustice of the killer’s sentencing, Nick takes the fight to the gang with violence. But the warfare escalates, and Nick must take things to unspeakable levels of brutality.
If the violent revenge plot sounds at all familiar, Death Sentence was originally a novel. A follow-up to Death Wish, which famously got made into a movie starring Charles Bronson. The author, Brian Garfield, was not especially keen on how Death Wish got turned into a sequel-churning machine that increasingly missed the point. However, Garfield fancied what Wan had done with Death Sentence, feeling it got what he was going for in the novel.
Bringing Home the Bacon
Kevin Bacon is key to making Death Sentence work. We’ve seen Bacon as a likable everyman, an utter creep, and a man losing his mind in other films, and this role feels like a melting pot of everything Bacon can do so well. You can believe he’s a grieving father as much as you can believe he’s a boring management type, but also never doubt he can bash a gangbanger’s head in with a baseball bat.
While this isn’t strictly horror from Wan, his knowledge and expertise in that genre shine through the grimy gnarly core of Death Sentence. This is a bleak, unforgiving revenge flick. Nick’s vengeance for his son leads to a second dose of personal tragedy where he’s lucky (or unlucky) to be left alive.
Wan paints this journey of retribution and suffering with empathy for Nick’s plight and mild scorn for his actions. The suicide run to the gang’s headquarters brings carnage, but ends with a mocking jab at what Nick has been reduced to. When Nick’s work is done, the finale mocks Nick one more time in the comfort of his own home.
Death Sentence reminds us that there’s often no justice in vigilante justice. That even the most well-intentioned vendettas have tragic consequences. It’s a revenge flick that doesn’t make revenge seem glamorous or cool. A rarity — even today.
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