By Robert Scucci
| Published
Escape rooms are fun because you can solve puzzles with your friends, win a prize, hit the gift shop, grab a beer, and go home. The escape room that Edgar (David Richmond-Peck) experiences in 2014’s Cruel and Unusual is not that kind of escape room. Every time he leaves, he has to relive the day his wife Maylon (Bernadette Saquibal) tries to poison him, he overpowers her and accidentally kills her, and then dies himself. It’s like The Neverending Story, except the story is dying a horrific death while killing your spouse, only to wake up in purgatory, talk about it in group therapy, and do it all over again. No thanks.
A dark, surreal psychological thriller packed with time loop tomfoolery, Cruel and Unusual is a total WTF movie with what I’d call the weirdest reverse redemption arc I’ve seen in recent memory. We start out rooting for Edgar, then slowly uncover more and more reasons to stop liking him. When he finally realizes what he has to do to break the cycle, it’s borderline unsatisfying by design, just to show how hollow the entire experience has made him.
Edgar Is Such A Tough Hang
There are two main settings that Cruel and Unusual explores throughout its 91-minute runtime. First is the house where Edgar lives with his Filipino immigrant wife Maylon and her troubled teenage son, Gogan (Monsour Cataquiz). Edgar doesn’t let Maylon work, keeps tight control over the finances, and is barely a father figure to Gogan, who keeps getting in trouble at school but is never given a chance to explain why. Edgar even threatens to send Gogan back to his abusive relatives in the Philippines if he doesn’t straighten up.
Feeling completely trapped, Maylon decides it’s in her and Gogan’s best interest to poison Edgar and start over. She goes through with it, Edgar realizes what’s happening once he becomes violently ill, and a scuffle breaks out when they fight over the phone so he can call for help. During that struggle, Edgar overpowers and kills Maylon, only to wake up in a building that feels like a cross between a rehab center and a mental hospital.
Edgar walks into a group therapy session run by a woman’s face on a television screen known as the Facilitator (Mary Black). There, he meets Doris (Michelle Harrison), Julien (Michael Eklund), and William (Richard Harmon). He quickly learns that everyone in the room committed brutal murders before arriving, that they’re all dead like him, and that this is their punishment. That fact is confirmed by another disembodied face on a screen, the Councillor (Andy Thompson).
Every day, Edgar experiences his cruel and unusual punishment through these sessions, hearing how William stabbed his father dozens of times before crushing his mother’s head with a jar of pickles, Doris committed suicide in front of her family, and Julien murdered his three children. Convinced he doesn’t belong there because he only killed his wife by accident while she was trying to kill him first, Edgar starts working on an escape plan between sessions and repeatedly reliving his death.
Learning Is How You Grow
The problem with Edgar in Cruel and Unusual is that he’s such a dolt. He’s technically right to question his punishment because he’s not a traditional cold-blooded killer. But the semantics are tricky. Since Maylon dies first, he’s still guilty of murder. And that’s where things get complicated. Each time Edgar relives his final day, he gains new perspective by seeing events from different angles.
What he learns is that he was a terrible person. He kept Maylon trapped in a life she didn’t want, using his financial control to dominate both her and Gogan, constantly threatening deportation whenever Gogan stepped out of line. Early on, you root for Edgar because you don’t have the full picture. As the truth comes into focus, it becomes a lot harder to blame Maylon for what she did.
Throughout his time-twisting odyssey, Edgar doesn’t really learn anything, or at least refuses to admit that he’s ever been in the wrong. He’s obsessed with escaping the cycle his own actions created, but he won’t take an honest look at himself. I’m not condoning murder, but if everyone who’s supposed to love you decides that killing you is the only way they could live a happy life, it might be time to look in the mirror before pointing fingers.
Watching Edgar try to manipulate his way out of an afterlife tailored to his actions is what makes this such an effective reverse redemption arc. He never truly grows. In his mind, he’s always the victim. That’s what makes it so compelling to watch him relive the same day over and over, slowly uncovering just how awful he is, and how everyone else sees him.
The moral of the story is simple. Don’t be an Edgar. But if you want to watch him squirm and try to talk his way out of his last day on Earth on repeat, you can stream Cruel and Unusual for free on Tubi as of this writing.
