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My Heart Can't Beat Unless You Tell it To (2020) is a movie my wife and I recently watched on Prime. The storyline follows a brother and sister with a sick younger brother who needs to drink blood to survive. They'll go to extreme measures to find and extract the blood; meanwhile, the brother feels his world is too small and wants to expand his circumstances...

This movie is directed by Jonathan Cuartas in his directorial debut and stars Patrick Fugit (Gone Girl), Ingrid Sophie Schram (Phantom Thread), Owen Campbell (Super Dark Times) and Katie Preston (Vagina Town).

This is a very unique and well done movie. The characters and circumstances draw you in and Campbell does a fantastic job of being eccentric. His mannerisms were perfect and every time he drank blood I cringed a little bit. The cast really does a great job depicting the characters inner struggles with the circumstances. The action scenes in this are very good. The screwdriver scene was well done and you find yourself feeling worse and worse for Campbell the entire film. The ending was smart and I loved how the film concluded.

Overall this is a well put together picture that's worth your time. I would score this an 8/10 and strongly recommend it.

Dark, sad storytelling. Not for the viewer looking for Jason, Freddy, Dracula or Frankenstein. No instant gratification, nor are you spoon fed all aspects of the story. A dark contemporary drama that explores what sacrifices may be made and how far family might go for a sick loved one. Truly horrific.

Decent acting, trippy story, but just really kinda sad. There were sympathetic characters and makes you wonder: How far would you go to save someone you love?? Worth a 1 time watch if you like this genre.

So, viewers seem to either despise or love this offering. I come down somewhere in the middle. The idea here is interesting: a "realistic" family of siblings that have a special circumstance within their midst; and dealing with that circumstance becomes a practical and emotional burden that is increasingly intolerable for everyone.

This is a low budget offering. To that end, the acting is (mostly) suitable for a film that is more about rumination than explanation or action. The camera work is also suitable for a film that takes place (mostly) inside.

However, I also agree that pacing is a major issue here. The pregnant pauses, the controlled meter and inflection of the dialogue, the lingering camera shots - at times each of these can seem excessive. My other complaint was that, for a realistic-style movie, there were some real television-style cliches here (for example, two of the potential victims escape only to be found again under circumstances that can only exist on celluloid).

I think the director may have been aiming for something like "A Girl Walks Home Alone" or "Martin" or maybe even Herzog's 1979 "Nosferatu the Vampyre." It never quite gets up to that level; but if you enjoy a more psychological or emotional approach to the vampire genre, this might work for you.

This movie would've received better public reviews if they listed it as a dark family drama and not horror. Misleading rating has made this film recurve much lower rating than it should. It's slow, but intriguing and thought provoking. Oh and it's sad and dark. I enjoyed it but need to watch a comedy after because it's filled with sadness and left me feeling the same.