The first question that one might want to ask about 2021’s Out of Death is what is going on with that title.

Out of Death?  Did they run out?  Is there an issue with the warehouse?  Is it a nationwide outage or just a regional problem?  How exactly does someone find themselves out of death?  I mean, there are plenty of shortages in the world.  There are people who can’t get clean drinking water or tasty food.  I had to wait an extra day to get my new scanner because of a supply chain issue.  These things happen.  But people never seem to run out of death.  Death is the one thing that we will always in large quantities.

As for the film itself, it is rather death-obsessed.  Shannon (Jaime King) is a photojournalist who has recently lost her father.  All she wants to do is spread his ashes in the woods.  However, when she witnesses a murder in the woods, she finds herself being pursued by a compromised deputy (Lala Kent).  Meanwhile, Jack Harris (Bruce Willis) is a retired detective who has recently lost his wife.  He wants to spend some time alone in his niece’s cabin but instead, he finds himself mixed up in Shannon’s problems.  The corrupt sheriff (Michael Sirow) wants to be mayor and he’s not going to let Shannon and Jack stand in his way, even if it means killing every possible witness.

Even though Bruce Willis gets top-billing along with Jaime King, he’s not in much of Out of Death.  Out of Death was one of the many film productions to be delayed by the COVID lockdowns.  When production finally did begin, Bruce Willis shot all of his scenes in one day.  (The entire film took 9 days to shoot.  Roger Corman, if he was still with us, would want to know why the production took 9 days when it could just as easily been done in two.)  Sadly, this is one of the films that Bruce Willis made after it became apparent that he was having serious issues with his health.  Willis delivers his lines in a halting manner, which technically works for his emotionally shattered character but which is still hard to watch now that we know that Willis was suffering from frontotemporal dementia at the time.  Producer Randall Emmett made his career by convincing big stars to appear in B-movies and he shouldn’t be faulted for that.  However, the later films he made with Willis not always easy to watch.  Say what you will about the films that Sylvester Stallone and Robert De Niro have made with Emmett, they all knew what they were getting into.  It’s hard to say whether the same was true with Bruce Willis.

As for Out of Death, it’s a fairly dull cat-and-mouse game but I will give it some credit for capturing the atmosphere that goes along with being isolated in the Southern wilderness.  This is a film where you could feel the humidity rising from the screen.  And Jaime King, who deserves better, gave a strong performance as Shannon.  Otherwise, the most interesting thing about Out of Death is the mystery as to what exactly the title means.

Out of Death?  It’s a nice thought.