Suckers is a 2020 American monster horror comedy film written, produced and directed by Judd Apatow.
The film centers on a group of college students who spend a vacation at a cabin by the lake which is contaminated with leeches which are genetically mutated by toxic waste.
The film stars Maude Apatow, Dylan Minnette, Ryan Lee, Katherine Langford, Eden Sher, Leslie Mann, Charlie Heaton, Sadie Sink, Emily Alyn Lind and Judah Lewis.
The film was distributed by Columbia Pictures and released on February 21, 2020 to favorable reception for its vintage b-movie clichés, gore and acting. The film was a box office success.
Plot[]
Seven first-year college kids plan a weeklong trip to a large cabin beside a lake, which is owned by the family of one of them. The richest of the girls, Steffy, even hires a gifted hairstylist in his twenties known as D.J. to do her hair while there. The latter rarely leaves his Seattle home and works from there, but the money is too good and he accepts, taking his much-younger sister Snowy, whom he homeschools, on the trip with him. She may befriend the older kids there, but is not allowed to party with them, swim in the lake or even leave the cabin.
They arrive in three cars, the surrounding forest mostly full of foreboding dead trees but that does not seem to bother most, only the easily frightened Snowy looks away. At the cabin, the seven party boys and girls engage in some underage drinking then put on their swimsuits to get in the lake, but as soon as one of the boys, Oliver, enters the water, he flies right out, squealing in pain. A surprisingly large red leech is sticking to his leg, he can peel it off easily enough, but the horrific pain he suffered for only five seconds was like nothing he had ever felt before. As they examine the lake from the shore, they are able to notice that it is teeming with thousands of suckers like that, leeches so big and voracious that they seem unnatural, probably a mutation caused by the toxic dumping done by the owners of the lake.
The youngsters get dressed again and decide to go back home, but all the cars' tires have been mysteriously slashed, and there is no phone signal even though that was not supposed to happen there. As the seven freshmen, the younger girl and her big brother grow alarmed, a man lurks in the forest nearby, watching them unnoticed. He is dressed as an executioner, with a coat and a hood, and carries many nasty-looking weapons and tools in his coat.
In a flashback, it is shown that Snowy is actually Princess Sno'bianca of Germia, a small European kingdom. When her widowed father remarried, her stepmother turned out to be an evil woman who betrayed the king and had him brutally murdered to rule alone with an iron fist. The talented young stylist known as the Queen's Mirror realized how cruel she was and escaped the kingdom taking its heiress the little princess, then only a toddler, with him to live in Seattle, Washington as his "sister" to save her from being eliminated. Determined to keep her safe, he instantly became very protective of her. But a dozen years later, the Queen's agents have finally tracked them down and found out about their trip to the cabin.
The masked man, one of the Queen's Huntsmen, had arrived at Snowy's now-known location and seen the chance to hide her murder among a killing spree at such remote location, and so he now starts picking off the kids one-by-one any time they separate from the rest. At first he uses his preferred method of cutting hearts out, using knives and pincers, intending to do the same to Snowy, but when he learns about the dreaded leeches, he decides to feed them instead. After Oliver is tied up and thrown in the lake, for hundreds of the disgusting creatures to swarm him and suck him dead in a matter of seconds, leaving all seven classmates dead, the ony ones left are Snowy and her "brother", but they are on to the killer. Both men get into a fight and the Mirror is soon left unconscious. The Huntsman avoids killing him, instead he chases Snowy, eventually cornering her. He ties her up to be thrown to the weird worms, easily lifting the smallest of the kids with one hand, but when he gets to the pier and is about to drop her, he is struck from behind by the recovered Mirror aka D.J. The would-be princess executioner falls into the water unconscious and the suckers make a meal out of him.
Still shaking from the experience, Snowy finds a device that the Huntsman was using, which her "brother" determines was what jammed all the phones, allowing him to call the nearest town police. The horror seems to be over when an older woman officer arrives and tries to calm down the two suvivors. She offers them a vitamin-rich juice box (Snowy goes for apple), but when they drink some they become unconscious, drugged.
Anohter flashback shows that a male officer was about to reach the cabin when he saw a woman running in apparent danger. As he stopped his car and tried to calm her down, she swiftly shoved an icepick into his brain, stole his clothes and his car and tricked the two survivors into thinking she was "Officer Tammy", a policewoman that would keep them safe. In fact, she was the Queen's Marionette, her own clone, highly trained and artificially aged, also sent to get Snowy if the Huntsman failed.
Now the loving "siblings" lie unconscious, and although the effects of the toxin used on them can be undone by something as simple as a kiss, there is no one to do that for Snowy. The Marionette takes the chance to bring Snowy along on her small plane, to render her back to her kingdom of birth, while the Queen's Mirror is to be left alive with his failure, by the Queen's orders.
Snowy wakes up tied to a cold table, not quite fully exposed, in a place that seems oddly familiar. She realizes it is a room in the castle from the early days of her life, but now the building seems abandoned and in decay. Beside her looms none other than her stepmother the Queen smiling giddily: "Welcome back to your old home, princess, I've waited a long time for this day to come. Well, home for me is a brand new palace and this smelly dump is left to carry out my most hated enemies' special executions... like yours! I'm hoping you inherited your late father's low pain tolerance, that'll make this much more fun. Maybe you'll die as badly as he did, or maybe even worse: my agents not only brought you back from that wretched country but also captured many of the wonderful mutant leeches found there! We've tested the painful sensation they can inflict, and it's off the chart... plus they're awfully sticky and slimy! They're totally joining our torture arsenal as of today (but only two or three of them will be used on you at a time... maybe four... or you won't last very long). But still, I think you deserve a choice as the king's true descendant, right? A quick death right now or we play a little game: if you can get out of the castle and across the moat I'll let you go free, but if any of my Huntsmen seizes you, you'll be brought back here to get very well acquainted with those icky suckers... and other stuff. You get a five-minute headstart before the guys go after you, and there's 12 of them in different parts of the castle waiting for the signal to get started. All windows and exits have been sealed except one. I have to say, I think you have no chance, but the choice is yours".
Snowy nods silently to let her captor know that she agrees to play the "game", but what the Queen deliberately failed to mention is that she would only begin to cut the ropes binding the girl's wrists and ankles to the corners of the table. The cruel woman leaves after doing that and the countdown begins. It takes Snowy almost five minutes to free her hands and untie her feet, then she starts running to save her life. The sound signaling that the hunt is on plays right after that, and Snowy spends so much time hiding, dashing, rushing up and down stairs and dodging danger that day turns to night, even swinging from a chandelier once, all to stay away from the many executioners, blood brothers of the one who was killed while hunting her and her friends at the lake site.
She is able to muster all her courage and slip around the Castle of Torture for long enough to give herself a shot at getting out. With her pursuers closing in, the princess goes for it and reaches the main castle door, thinking it may be the one unlocked, and she is right. But to her horror, the largest of the Huntsmen, almost twice her size, stands on the drawbridge between her and freedom. Barriers rise from the water on the sides built to stop any fugitives from diving in the moat, and slipping past him seems like an impossible task, so the gentle girl who never fought anyone jumps at the giant to hit him with her body and make him fall backwards. She successfully lands on the drawbridge with nothing before her but the wilderness outside, but the bridge begins to be raised to hinder her escape. Soon it is too steep to run up to the end and jump off, and she slides back into the waiting arms of the assembled Huntsmen. Her newfound nerve abandoning her, the princess bursts into tears, realizing everything was stacked against her.
And soon enough the Queen is seated to watch and signal the start of her stepdaughter's killer torture, complete with...
SUCKERS
Cast[]
Maude Apatow as Cameron
Dylan Minnette as D.J.
Ryan Lee as Thad
Katherine Langford as Steffy
Eden Sher as Ellie
Leslie Mann as Officer Tammy
Charlie Heaton as Officer Hank
Sadie Sink as Kira
Emily Alyn Lind as Jill
Judah Lewis as Oliver
Trivia[]
TBA