Mercy Netflix Movie Review

Mercy (2016)

Mercy - A lot of action, very little story.

Watch Mercy on Netflix
Written by: Chris Sparling
Directed by: Chris Sparling
Starring:  James Wolk, Caitlin FitzGerald, Tom Lipinski
Rated: TV-MA/R

Plot
A family must protect their dying mother from a religious sect.

Verdict
This family hates each other for inexplicable reasons. While a dying mother means an inheritance is at stake for the family, a religious cult wants to... ease suffering, convert a dying woman?  This has very little story, explains even less, and really just sets up a home invasion, capitalizing on the formula from The Purge (2013).
Skip it.

Review
The set up is simple. George refuses medical treatment for his dying wife and also cuts out his step sons, Brad and Travis, from their biological mother's inheritance. We don't know if Brad and Travis are in town for their dying mother or to secure that inheritance.
George is a real piece of work, and there is a very clear line between George's sons and his wife's from a former marriage.

I'm curious to know how the family grew up. Brad and Travis introduce Ronnie and TJ as their brothers, and they are quickly corrected. It's "step brothers." Did they grow up together? Has there always been this animosity? You'd think the mother would have held the family together. Maybe she did, and when she became bed ridden that eroded. Who knows, the movie has no interest in set up, story, or really plot. While it seems the mother's life is at stake, I kept wondering if that was all. Who cares?
While one of the brothers brings a girlfriend that could be used as an audience surrogate, she's instead told numerous times, "You don't understand." She serve no purpose.

After a poor set up the home invasion starts. George, Ronnie, and TJ have disappeared, leaving Brad, Travis, and that girl to fend for themselves against masked assailants.

A cult doesn't want the mother to suffer, so we presume, so the cult's plan is to terrorize and attack the family until we give in. That's air tight logic. Torture them until they love you.

Brad and Travis fight for their lives before the movie flips and gives us the attack from the cult's point of view, in essence telling the story twice. Before we saw everything from Brad and Travis's viewpoint. From there it looked like the assailants were a trained special ops team.
From the cult's point of view, they have no idea what they're doing and keep making mistakes. There ineptness is kind of funny. They accidentally kill George and then one of his sons.

Someone had to have pitched this as a comedy at some point. It could almost be The Cabin in the Woods (2012), a movie that attempts to explain why horror movies have so many logic lapses. This could have done the same for home invasions.

With all of the commotion, how did Travis and Brad not wake up? It's an incredible sequence of events where the cult just accidentally kills multiple people while the brothers and a girl sleep through it. All this happens while their mother is dying upstairs. At one point one brother is chopping a chest of drawers with an axe right next to his bed ridden mom. It didn't seem desperate and scared, it was kind of funny.

Hello? Is the plot in here?

The plot structure, and lack of story make this a quick ride, but it feels like a way to stretch this out unless the structure has relevance to the plot. It doesn't.
One of the assailants is trying to rally the troops as they're scared that they've murdered three people and assaulted even more.
The leader states, "I know that it might seem like what we're doing is wrong, but it's not."
I couldn't wait for that explanation, but it never came. I'm not quite clear on what they were doing at all.

I think it's a twist when one of the son's gives in to the attackers and gives the mother a "cure." The entire time I thought everyone wanted to end her suffering by killing her, but I guess they didn't. You know the movie did a good job when I don't know if that is a twist or if I missed something.