Horror Movie Review: Sick Boy (2012)

Oh, so close! Sick Boy creates a level of intrigue and tension but throws it all away with a questionable final 15 minutes. You see Sick Boy is a zombie horror but you wouldn’t know it for almost all of its run-time.

Lucy (Skye McCole Bartusiak) gives up her job as a dental nurse because she can’t stomach it much to her fiancé Chris’ (Marc Donato) annoyance. He pressures her into looking for work so when a high-paying babysitting job comes along, she jumps at the chance. Especially as it seems so easy.

She is hired by Helen (Debbie Rochon) to stay in at her home. All to make sure nothing happens to her sick son downstairs. Lucy is told under no circumstances is she to go down to him though. He is very ill with an unknown disease and it could be contagious.

Easy money, right? All she has to do is stay upstairs until Helen comes home and listen to the baby monitor that is set up in the boy’s room. Of course, what kind of horror movie would it be if Lucy didn’t get curious?

I wanted to love Sick Boy, I really did as for a period of time I was invested in just what was going on downstairs. Was the boy being tortured by his sick mother? Was this a possession movie? Or was it something completely different? Sadly, it turns out that it’s not different at all. Instead it seems as though the boy got infected while on holiday and his mother has been trying to find a cure. Not that Lucy doesn’t find this out until it’s way too late.

The latter part of the movie isn’t the only problem though. It’s quite slow at the start and Skye McCole Bartusiak’s Lucy isn’t the most likeable. She’s not a bad actress but her character doesn’t have much depth and it’s arguable that she could have just left well alone. As unlikable as she is, her fiancé Chris is even worse. His constant annoyance with her really makes you wonder about the state of their relationship. It’s not helped that Marc Donato phones it in here. So when the stuff hits the fan, it has very little emotional impact.

With a decent enough budget, what most will really remember about Sick Boy is the cinematography. It looks great and helps ramp up the tension during the middle portion of the film which is when it’s at its best. Such a shame.