Looks That Kill

Sixteen year old Max has a face that kills. Not as a figure of speech: in this film people who look at him die, so he keeps it wrapped in bandages and lives alone. Then he meets Alex, whose rare heart condition makes the organ grow whenever she feels anything, which means joy and rage and jealousy are all equally fatal. Kellen Moore wrote and directed, his first feature, with Brandon Flynn and Julia Goldani Telles in the leads. The pitch is genuinely appealing: two teenagers for whom being loved is a physical danger. It went out digitally on 19 June 2020. The trouble is that the metaphor cannot carry its own weight. The rules of the world are never pressed, the hospital and family scenes wobble between fable and realism, and the second half loses the nerve of the first. What remains is a slight but likeable idea carried by two good actors. Who it is for: viewers who like teen romance with a strange premise. Who it is not for: anyone who wants a metaphor followed to its end.