What Death Leaves Behind is a 2019 thriller about a man who experiences recurring nightmares of a murder, leading him to an unbearable truth.
Jake Warren (Khalil McMillan) is a happily married family man, he and his wife Lisa (Shaira Barton) dealing with his need for a new kidney and the treatment he undergoes. It’s stressful, with few quality donors and Jake stuck on a list. However, circumstances eventually get him the surgery and he’s soon back home with a fresh organ, feeling like he can take on the next chapter in his still young life. Unfortunately, it’s also left him haunted by strange visions, that of the murder of the woman whose kidney he now has in his own body. This soon has him on a dark journey of discovery that pushes him to take revenge.
While the plot of director and co-writer’s Scott A. Hamilton‘s is not all that original, it certainly doesn’t mean there’s no room for exploration, something the filmmaker’s try to take on in both the relationships and emotional impact of Jake’s condition and the way it’s presented. You’d think this was all grounds for a run-of-the-mill horror film, one more cookie cutter slasher, but What Death Leaves Behind has other plans, beginning with its use of non-linear storytelling, where we skip around in scattered moments in Jake’s troubling odyssey.
This is a risky choice, and it appears that Hamilton knows it, prefacing his film with a dictionary definition of the word itself, priming his audience to be aware that we’ll be jumping around back and forth in his movie. Admittedly, it’s not easy to be sure where we’re at, the film beginning – as so many do these days – with a harrowing sequence that then plays out in the past leading back to it. That naturally has some potential for some fun challenge, but the visual or auditory markers we need to be sure we know where we are sometimes are missing, which leads to some gaps. Even still, Hamilton doesn’t always trust us to follow along, occasionally splashing a title card on screen that tells us where we are.
Either way, there’s still a lot about Hamilton’s efforts that work well, these especially in the flashbacks dealing with the deceased organ donor (Erin O’Brien) and her abusive boyfriend (Johnny Alonso). There is real tragedy in these moments and the way Hamilton stages and photographs them like actors on a dimly-lit stage with Jake increasingly becoming part of it are clever and compelling. In fact, Hamilton’s greatest strength is his sense of style, with a few solid moments that genuinely have some punch, these mostly dealing with the emotional struggles of Jake’s health and obvious breakdown during recovery.
This is a small independent film, and as such, doesn’t have the gloss of a big studio counterpart. Hamilton is limited but does well with what he has, even while his actors don’t always have the presence needed to give this broader reach. It’s a brief experience, and I applaud the filmmakers for steering clear of the giant temptations lingering all about the story that could lead this into generic horror, instead sticking steadfastly to its core themes of loss and revenge. A smart ending helps a lot as well in making this something to consider.