Cliff and his wife Abbey are out driving one night and seems to have some marital problems. While arguing in the car, they soon get themselves into a horrible accident and Abby is burned beyond recognition. Later on Cliff wakes up in a hospital and soon finds out that Abby's in a coma and is on life support. Cliff returns home, but soon gets a visit from Abby, a ghostly visit but that leaves burn marks where she has touched him. She keeps showing up and when Cliff’s lawyer is found burned to death, Cliff begins to realize that Abby might be behind all what's happening.
Horror movies with a thinkable message, sometimes it works, sometimes it does not. I gotta admit that I was a little afraid that Rob Schmidt's Right To Die was gonna try and deliver some preachy message, like Homecoming did or Carpenter's Pro-Life, but luckily it didn't. Instead the episode turned out to be one cool kind of ghost story that was easy to get into at first, had some good horrific scenes to show for, some characters with a little depth to them and last but not least, an outcome that made one feel that watching Right To Die was time well spent. Maybe not the very best episode of the season so far, (can't really say which one has been), but definitely among the top ones and an episode that is well recommended to take a look at.
If you didn't know it, Rob Schmidt who directed this episode did also helm the survival horror Wrong Turn, a movie that I'm a big fan of so other than me at first being afraid of being slapped with a preachy message, I was also excited to see what Schmidt had in store for us. Written by John Esposito, who wrote the screenplay for Stephen King's Graveyard Shift, Schmidt manages to deliver a few chills, some gore, but most of all a great amount of suspense and dread that lingers for most of the way through it all. It's a story that deals with the supernatural, still it doesn't jump on the Asian horror wagon and even though it deals with a vengeful ghost, it does it in a slightly different kind of way.
 
The pacing of the film is extremely good and it had my full attention throughout it all, something I can't say about some of the other episodes in the series. As the story unfolds, we get flashbacks that makes for some twists and turns, and the good thing here was that Right To Die had horror to it all the way, be it supernatural or more of the realistic kind. While I want nothing more than for a film to really scare the living hell outta me, I can't say this one did, but on the other hand, those types of flicks are so rare it hardly ever happens anymore. What I can say though was that the scares were good, especially two of them. So even if the film wasn't "scary", from a horror point of view it sure did things right.
Martin Donovan who played Cliff was good and was very believable and so was his wife (played by Julia Anderson), even though she was a corpse in bandages for most of the time (which looked pretty darn horrific). What I found to be really cool though was that Corbin Bernsen had a role in the film where he plays Cliff's lawyer and friend, who's a bit of a sleazy guy who only thinks about money. He did an excellent job with the role, but overall the whole cast did a terrific job. The film also had some sex scenes that actually fit perfectly into the flick and were justified. I usually hate that in (normal) movies since those scenes are often just used as pointless fillers, but here they actually worked wonders. All in all, Rob Schmidt really delivered so check this one out.
One of the best episodes in the season so far, but why you might ask. Well, maybe because it didn't feel like it tried to be anything that had already been done hundreds of times before, and neither did it set out to create something completely original. What made it good was that it felt very genuine and delivered solid horror that worked really well. It had a great story to stand on from the start and from there, it only keep getting better...not to mention that it looked really good. In the end it might not be for everyone, but I'm sure a lot of horror fans will appreciate it.
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ALTERNATIVE TITLE: Right to Die
MOVIE YEAR: 2007
DIRECTOR: Rob Schmidt
WRITING CREDITS: John Esposito
GENRE: Horror
CAST: Julia Anderson, Martin Donovan, Corbin Bernsen
COUNTRY: USA
RUNTIME: 60 min
RATING: 9/10
Masters of Horror (S02E09): Right to Die Website/IMDB Click here
Masters of Horror (S02E09): Right to Die Trailer Click here
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