Sweetheart is a 2019 monster movie directed by Justin Dillard and starring Kiersey Clemons and Emory Cohen.
Clemons plays a woman who washes ashore on an uninhabited island after the boat she was on capsizes while on vacation. After spending some time attempting to survive on her own, she soon comes to realize that she isn't as alone as she initially thought. On the contrary, she finds herself being stalked by a dangerous creature that emerges from the water each night to feast.
Tropes found in this film include:
- Action Girl: Jennifer quickly proves herself very competent in survival skills and even takes down a huge monster that had killed all her friends, getting only minor wounds in doing so. Why she has the skills while they didn't is not explained in the film.
- Action Survivor: Although Jennifer appears to have no special training in wilderness survival or self-defense, she survives the nights and defeats the creature through determination, grit, intelligence, resourcefulness and self-mastery.
- Alien Blood: The monster has black blood.
- Ambiguous Ending: The final shot of the movie is an injured and exhausted Jennifer slowly limping toward the raft after killing the monster. Whether she ever makes it home is left unanswered, although the note she leaves behind implies that she's beyond the point of caring. Given that a massive stretch of the forest is on fire, it's also possible that any passing planes might see and rescue her.
- Ambiguous Situation: What happened between Lucas, Mia and Zach? He has stab wounds, and his blood is apparently inside Lucas's raft and upon his effects. What exactly happened is never truly revealed and with the monster taking Mia and Lucas, neither we nor Jen will ever know.
- Asshole Victim: Lucas and Mia are both insensitive, condescending pricks who are strongly implied to have murdered one of the group's friends. Lucas is also shown to act possessive and entitled when it comes to Jenn. As such, it is unlikely anyone will feel particularly upset when both wind up being monster chow by the end of the movie.
- Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: While Jennifer's initial reunion with Mia and Lucas after they wash up onshore is very warm and emotional, they turn out to be a pair of shitweasels pretty quickly. And that's before evidence begins to pile up that they may have killed one of their supposed friends.
- Cassandra Truth: Jennifer tries to warn Mia and Lucas they need to get off the island before nightfall. Neither believe her about the monster until they see it for themselves.
- Crying Wolf: Jennifer apparently has a reputation for this among her circle of friends. Given that Lucas and Mia are assholes, it's ambiguous whether it's deserved or not.
- Damsel out of Distress: Jennifer needs no help in rescuing herself. Despite difficulties, the only other characters in the story (including her boyfriend) prove useless and Jennifer shows great skills taking down the monster that was threatening her all alone. In fact, the others prove more of a hindrance than anything.
- Death by Irony: Lucas and Mia don't believe Jenn when she tells them about the monster and they stop her from trying to leave. Well, they should've listened since they both end up monster chow. It might be the universe balancing the scales since it's heavily implied those two murdered Zach.
- Death of a Thousand Cuts: It takes a lot of stabbings for Jennifer to finally bring the monster down.
- Determinator: Jennifer refuses to give up against the monster and if she goes down, she resolves to fight to her last breath.
- Due to the Dead: Jennifer does the best she can with her limited tools to bury and cover Brad's body. Unfortunately, this quickly turns into Not Enough to Bury once the creature digs up Brad's corpse and eats it.
- Eldritch Ocean Abyss: The waters immediately surrounding the island are sparkling, clear and shallow...except for an impenetrably dark, perfectly round, and seemingly-bottomless black pit from which the creature emerges each night.
- Foreshadowing: When Jenn finds the photograph of a family that either visited or washed ashore like she did previously. When she looks closely, she sees two very ominous dots behind the family in the dark that indicate the camera's flash reflecting off of a pair of eyes in the darkness. Yikes.
- Half the Man He Used to Be: Zach's corpse washes up to the island sans lower torso.
- Human Resources: Jennifer uses Zach's corpse as bait, hanging it from a tree to draw out the creature.
- Made of Iron: The creature gets a flare point blank to the face, stabbed in the chest underwater, and stabbed dozens of more times by Jennifer before finally dying. Downplayed, however, as it's repeated stab wounds do begin to hinder it severely and it ultimately dies of blood loss.
- Make Sure He's Dead: Jennifer takes no chances - even after the creature seems to be dead, she painstakingly decapitates its corpse for good measure.
- Minimalism: This is an overall pretty minimalistic movie. For the most part, the movie only has one character, Jennifer, and doesn't even show the creature until halfway through the movie, and the story is set on a single beach, with only a few props.
- Ms. Fanservice: Jennifer wears a variety of swimwear, courtesy of a washed-up suitcase, and often leans towards the camera while wearing it. We also get a brief bit of Toplessness from the Back when she has a wash in the sea.
- Nice Day, Deadly Night: By day, the island is a tropical paradise. By evening, a shark-like humanoid emerges from the waters to hunt and kill those it can get its claws into.
- Nothing Is Scarier:
- Quite a lot of this until around halfway through the movie. The only hint we get that something unusual is going on are Brad's last words before he succumbs to his wound.
"Did you see it?"- Even by the end, we don't know exactly what the monster is, where it came from, or what is down there in its home in the dark hole.
- Once is Not Enough: Defied: after the monster collapses from blood loss and dies, Jenn stabs it once more to make sure and then decapitates it with a knife just to be sure it's dead.
- Only Known by Their Nickname: To everyone else, Jennifer is simply called "Jenn". Her full name only gets used when she's referring to herself in writing.
- Scenery Porn: The island is extremely beautiful.
- Shark Man: We don't get a good look at the monster until quite a ways into the movie, but when we do, it turns out to be humanoid but with some distinctly shark-like features.
- Sinister Silhouettes: We get our first glimpse at the monster this way. Jennifer tries to get the attention of a plane flying overhead on one of her first nights on the island by firing a shot of a flare gun into the sky. She's too late, unfortunately, and as the flare descends toward the ocean and illuminates the surrounding area, we can see a vaguely humanoid but distinctly inhuman silhouette standing in the water watching her.
- Spooky Photographs: Jennifer finds the personal effects of a family that previously wound up on the island. While going through some of their photos, she comes across a picture of them at night, and sees a pair of ominous white eyes in the background.
- Surprisingly Realistic Outcome:
- As dangerous as the monster is, it's still a predatory animal. While it seems to enjoy the taste of humans, being stabbed or otherwise injured makes it back off several times like a real predator would react.
- While the creature remains dangerous until it dies, the stab wounds Jenn inflicts on it begin to hinder it and it's visibly struggling to move towards the end of the confrontation. Rather than a climatic finale, the creature merely dies of blood loss from its many wounds and collapses.
- Trivial Title: Other than when Lucas condescendingly refers to his girlfriend Jennifer as it a couple times, the word "Sweetheart" says nothing about the details of the film.
- Wham Shot: Jennifer fires a flare to attract the attention of a plane flying by the island at night. The flare descends toward the horizon. And something in the distance stands up.
