Review Don't kill me: the Italian Twilight problem

Based on the novel of the same name by Chiara Palazzolo, Don’t kill me is the Italian answer to the Twilight saga: read our review

Contents

Points in favor

Points against

ORIGINAL TITLE: Do not kill me. KIND: horror. NATION: Italy. FILM DIRECTOR: Andrea De Sica. CAST: Alice Pagani, Rocco Fasano, Silvia Calderoni, Fabrizio Ferracane, Sergio Albelli, Giacomo Ferrara, Anita Caprioli, Federico Ielapi, Esther Elisha. DISTRIBUTOR: Warner Bros. Entertainment Italia. EXIT: April 21, 2021. DURATION: 90′.

Alice Pegani and Rocco Fasano are Mirta and Robin in Do not kill me, the coming of age film with horror colors that winks at the phenomenon Twilight and all the other works that mix immortal love with the charm of dark and gothic atmospheres.

Available for purchase and rental on most streaming platforms (Apple TV, Sky Primafila, Amazon Prime Video, YouTube, Timvision), Andrea De Sica’s film is aimed primarily at an audience of very young and incurable romantics, who they will find bread for their teeth in the story between Mirta and Robin.

Plot | Review Don’t kill me

Don’t Kill Me is the film adaptation of the novel of the same name by the Italian author Chiara Palazzolo, the first volume of a horror trilogy that tells of the disturbing world of deaths.

Mirta and Robin, played by the beloved stars of Baby e Shame on Italy, Alice Pegani and Rocco Fasano, are two teenagers in love who get trapped in a toxic and unhealthy love story.

After approaching the drug tunnel, the two protagonists lose their lives in violent and dramatic circumstances. Mirta, however, suddenly wakes up from her eternal sleep: bewildered, frightened and alone, she discovers in spite of herself that she has door top, a sort of zombie who, in order to survive, is forced to feed on other human beings.

With the help of Sara (Silvia Calderoni), a survivor who becomes her mentor, Mirta will try to stay alive by following the rules of that new world made up of hunts, escapes and blood.

The homegrown Twilight | Review Don’t kill me

The story narrated in Andrea De Sica’s film is placed on the line of those works in which the supernatural becomes a pure and simple expedient to tell adolescent love, the passionate and incredibly painful one, which makes us perceive every kiss and every caress as the end of the world, which leads us to idealize the other and to become totally irrational when it comes to him, what for which to stop seeing our sweetheart is like to stop breathing.

In this sense, Mirta and Robin are no different from the various Bella and Edward, Elena and Stefan, Julie and R. Come in Twilight, born The vampire diary and in Warm Bodies, in fact, also in Thou shalt not kill me the nerve center of the story lies in the (literally) immortal bond of the two protagonists, a relationship that overwhelms them to the point of endangering their own lives.

It is curious that even from an aesthetic point of view, the film based on the 2005 novel by Chiara Palazzolo recalls Twilight: the resemblance between Robert Pattinson and Rocco Fasano is striking!

Romantic suicide | Review Don’t kill me

There is a detail not to be underestimated in Don’t Kill Me that makes the film quite controversial. The plot itself presents itself as extremely problematic in the staging of the combination of love / death.

Andrea De Sica’s film offers a vision of love that is wrong from every point of view, because a love that passes through violence, suffering and even death cannot be defined as such. As much as every feeling seems magnified during adolescence, a film, especially if it is intended for younger people, cannot convey the message that suicide is a romantic gesture.

Impossible to remain indifferent to the sequence in which a teenager takes his own life in the hope of awakening from death and thus being able to love forever the person he had a crush on.

It is important to clear some issues, but it is equally important that they are treated in the most transparent, clear and responsible way possible. And like it or not, Don’t kill me didn’t do it, becoming the spokesperson for an unclear and decidedly dangerous message.

A not very linear story | Review Don’t kill me

If from the point of view of the themes Do not kill me turns out to be a failure, it is no better from the point of view of the structure of the film itself.

The montage that continuously and convulsively alternates the present and flashbacks it does nothing but confuse the viewer, who cannot keep up with the events narrated and struggles to follow the story of Mirta and Robin.

From the very first minutes, it is clear that De Sica’s film is a succession of disconnected scenes, a non-linear story in which it seems impossible not to be confused, in which greater weight is given to the more sensual and spicy sequences than to those which should be crucial to the progress of the plot.

Conclusions

Difficult to be lenient with Don’t kill me, which fails to convince either from the point of view of the issues dealt with, or from that of the script, which is presented as extremely twisted and difficult to follow.

And if we add to this an unconvincing acting and a plot that seems to have copied from rather well-known novels and films without adding any element of novelty, then it is clear that our judgment can only be negative.

A controversial Italian Twilight