Peacock has announced that Sick, the new horror film from Blumhouse, Miramax, and writer/producer Kevin Williamson will premiere on the streaming service January 13. You can watch the trailer for the Sick movie using the player below!
In the film, as the pandemic steadily brings the world to a halt, Parker and her best friend Miri decide to quarantine at the family lake house alone – or so they think.
The Sick movie was directed by John Hyams (Alone) from a script by Kevin Williamson (Scream, I Know What You Did Last Summer) and Katelyn Crabb.
The film stars Gideon Adlon (Blockers, The Craft: Legacy), Bethlehem Million (And Just Like That), Marc Menchaca (The Outsider, Ozark) and Jane Adams (Twin Peaks, Poltergeist, Hacks).
The producers include Kevin Williamson, Bill Block, and Ben Fast. The Sick movie was filmed on location in Eden, Utah.
In his review from Fantastic Fest 2022, Vital Thrills writer Alan Cerny called the movie “whip-smart, sharp as a butcher’s knife, scary and thrilling in all the best ways.” He said it is “informed about the times in which it’s set and has things to say about how we are still coping with all this trauma without being heavy-handed about it.”
Cerny talked more about the plot as well: “It’s a slasher film set in the opening weeks of the pandemic, and the pandemic fills the film with context, meaning, and a sense of place and time.
“It’s about how our relationships with each other have changed as much as it’s about the pandemic, and it uses the pandemic, and the horror genre, to point out some important social truths, while remaining a tense, riveting good time.”
“The premise is a simple one – it’s early April 2020, and stay-at-home orders in the United States have been brought down across the country,” Cerny continued.
“Parker (Gideon Adlon), though, has a plan – her family has a secluded vacation lake house in the country, and there is no better place for her and her friend Miri (Bethlehem Million) to hunker down and stay safe.
“Parker’s on-again, off-again boyfriend, DJ (Dylan Sprayberry) shows up uninvited – he and Parker are having relationship issues and DJ wants to get them resolved one way or the other.
“That night, however, someone breaks into the house, and what was supposed to be a quiet quarantine on the lake turns into a fight for everyone’s lives.”
Cerny gave the movie a score of 8.5 out of 10, because “this is one of the best slasher movies to come down in a long, long time. It’s genuinely scary, each jump scare is well orchestrated, and there is some ridiculously-complicated stunt work and tension building that director John Hyams juggles seemingly effortlessly.
“It respects the tropes of the genre, knows what we expect, but instead of using pop culture references to subvert it like the ‘Scream’ franchise does it uses how we relate to each other in these pandemic years to make informed, interesting character and plot choices that propel the story forward in unique, imaginative ways.”
He wraps up his review by saying: “This movie’s crazy smart – none of the characters behave stupidly and throughout ‘Sick’ we as the audience are constantly questioning what we would do in their place.
“The script by Williamson and Katelyn Crabb is crackerjack, and I feel that it has an accurate read on human nature and a pragmatic worldview, but not so much that it ceases to be fun.
“I don’t want to dive in too much into the twists and turns the plot takes, but I do believe that it handles where it goes with sensitivity, but again, it’s a matter of perspective and there will be audiences who will reject it due to their own experiences with the pandemic.
“That can’t be helped, and all I can say without giving away the store is that I hope audiences see it with an open mind.”
Mirko Parlevliet has been reporting on the entertainment industry since 1998 and founded Vital Thrills to provide the latest news on streaming, movies, and TV shows. He previously created the websites ComingSoon, SuperHeroHype, and ShockTillYouDrop.