RIGHT TO DIE

Cliff and his wife Abbey are arguing while driving down a road in the middle of the woods, but a moment of distraction causes the car to go off the road, resulting in a fuel leak and a fire. Cliff emerges unharmed from the accident while Abbey is terribly burned all over her body. The woman is hospitalized but is in very serious condition, kept alive by machines. During Abbey's coma, Cliff realizes that his wife has developed the ability to separate her spirit from her body, and he takes advantage of this power to punish everyone who has wronged her in life. The problem also concerns Cliff, since the man has never been a "model" husband. "Masters of Horror" is a unique project born from the mind of Mick Garris, a director known in the horror genre mainly for the adaptations of Stephen King's novels. Garris thought of bringing together the most representative horror film directors in a project destined for cable TV Showtime and home video, the result is "Masters of Horror", a series of 13 short films of 60 minutes each, each directed by a great name in genre cinema; each episode has a budget of 1.8 million dollars, the location set in the Canadian city of Vancouver, and total creative freedom was granted to each director. The names involved in the second season of this project are: Tobe Hooper, Dario Argento, Stuart Gordon, Joe Dante, John Carpenter, John Landis, Ernest Dickerson, Brand Anderson, Tom Holland, Peter Medak, Rob Schmidt, Norio Tsuruta, and Mick Garris himself. For the ninth episode of the second season of "Masters of Horror", Rob Schmidt is called to direct, a talented director who made his name known to the horror audience with the excellent rural slasher "Wrong Turn" and who is about to return with the thriller "The Alphabet Killer". In this case, Schmidt found himself telling a classic story of otherworldly revenge, seasoned with enough originality and infused with a good dose of cruelty. Just as in "Pro-Life", an episode of this second season directed by Carpenter, in "Right to Die" a politically and socially relevant theme is touched upon, as the original titles effectively explain despite the less effective Italian adaptations. Carpenter, for his part, tackled the theme of abortion with a convinced progressive approach, Schmidt instead deals with euthanasia, but does so with less emphasis and less critically than his colleague, dedicating more interest to the horror and revenge story he has at his disposal. His approach to the theme is nevertheless a sarcastic reflection on the selfishness that leads men (politicians?) to take charge of a situation and fight for it in order to demonstrate that their persistence has nothing to do with the collective interest, but is merely instrumental and "ad personam". The screenplay by John Esposito ("The Creature of the Cemetery"; "Talos - The Shadow of the Pharaoh") is well structured and manages to give adequate space both to the psychological characterization of the characters and to the functional atrocities of horror/splatter of which the film is filled. The character of Cliff Addison, played by a good Martin Donovan ("Wind Chill"; the TV series "Ghost Whisperer"), is an anomalous protagonist, a positive character who turns out to be a "bastard" opportunist, a turncoat ready to fight against euthanasia simply to preserve his safety from the visits of his vengeful wife suspended between life and death. The same Abbey, played by the voluptuous Julia Anderson (the TV series "The Dead Zone"), is a sweet but lethal little wife, victim of wrongs and betrayals. Even the supporting characters, such as Cliff's lawyer and his assistant/lover, although more faithful to the stereotype, have adequate development that allows them to appear less banal than they could have been. Here and there the rhythm of the short film slows down, making the film seem longer than its actual duration, but the interesting evolution of the story manages to keep the viewer's interest well awake. As with every episode of this TV series, here the special effects have considerable relevance. In this case, the team of Berger and Nicotero indulged in splatter excesses culminating in a realistic flaying and the gruesome makeup of the burned Abbey, whose macabre appearance halfway between Freddy Krueger and a cenobite of "Hellraiser" would not make her look out of place as a "boogeywoman". The bitter ending contributes to enhancing what proves to be one of the most successful episodes of this second season of "Masters of Horror".