Arrow Video Frightfest Review: Sweetie, You Won’t Believe It

Life can be hard.

The bank calling you to chase up payments. Your wife claiming you hate her mother. The reality of becoming a father for the first time and the inevitable battles over baby names.

Sometimes you need to just get away from it all.

This is the situation Dalstan, put upon hero of Yernar Nurgaliyev’s horror comedy Sweetie, You Won’t Believe it, finds himself trapped within. And like the very best of both the genres this film beautifully straddles…sometimes getting away from it all only makes you realise how ridiculous running away ultimately is because inevitably it can sometimes be a wild wild world out there (and find yourself pursued by a multitude of killers, deranged locals and well…deranged local killers).

Sweetie, You Won’t Believe It excels from the very start at establishing it’s tone, a combination of comedy styles that sees visual slapstick that would delight the Three Stooges, flurries of screwball fast dialogue that would get the nod of the Marx Brothers, and the painfully hilarious man child problems that abound in contemporary comedies. It’s a glorious blend that only gets more zany and salty as Dalstan and his two best friends embark on their escape to the country. Importantly, as well as clearly riffing on an array of comedy stylings, the film wears it’s horror references on its sleeve just as excitingly.

The film feels like a bonkers blend of Deliverance meets Shaun of The Dead with a dash of Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Friday The 13^th; it’s so gleeful in it’s inspirations but without ever becoming beholden to them, adding a charm that only makes it more successful as an audience pleaser, finding space to balance the humour with some impactful gore effects and suspense, culminating in a set piece that sees the classic horror trope of avoiding detection from the unstoppable maniac become a dance of mimicry that elegantly mirrors silent comedy spectacle.

Sweetie, You Won’t Believe It is a tour de force of horror comedy styling, illuminated by a real sense of joy that translates into the central narrative, as what initially feels like it could become an overly laddish comment on the tyranny of domestic coupling reveals it’s heart about the importance of connection, whether it be with disconnected friends or the real love of a partner and the life you strive for together. Life can be tough…but what’s tougher? Well, sweetie, you won’t believe it!