From the Republic of Cyprus, the adventure thriller S.O.S. Survive or Sacrifice boasts all the twisty plotting of its titular string of Morse code. In the Mediterranean, young American woman Kate (Jeannine Kaspar, 2014’s Hidden in the Woods) meets her younger Russian sister, Liz (a debuting Ksenia Pinch), an emo ginger who leaves their passports at an airport bench like a total dum-dum. Get used to that behavior; I’m sensing a trend.
Stranded at a hotel, an infuriated Kate leaves Liz in their room and goes to get completely blitzed at the bar. There, she’s befriended by Myra (newcomer Marianna Rosset), a sexy local who’s actually 50% of a con-artist couple; Myra’s other, definitely lesser half (Backdraft 2’s William Baldwin, formerly “the hot Baldwin,” now fully transformed into Daniel) raids and ransacks their targets’ rooms while Myra keeps them occupied on the dance floor. Of course, Kate’s room isn’t empty at all, which a bow-tied Baldwin soon discovers. While Liz evades capture and worse, she has a tough time convincing hotel staff she’s not making up a story, much less communicating with them in a common tongue.
Meanwhile, back at the main story, Myra convinces Kate to take a late-night joyride in a hot air balloon with two random dudes, because that’s exactly the kind of activity to which drunk beautiful people stumble. Things quickly go south, in that they’re unable to control the balloon. Winds blow it over the ocean and out of cellphone range. As night turns to day, one guy is wind-turbined outta there when a blade slices through the basket; the other guy’s leg gets pierced by a splinter the size of a wooden vampire stake, prompting Kate to remove her shirt to fashion a tourniquet.
With that, Cypriot director and co-writer Roman Doronin (Portrait of God) introduces S.O.S.’ other throughline: increasingly desperate reasons for the two ladies to disrobe, one piece of clothing at a time. His camera is so pointedly leering, the movie begins to resemble a game of strip poker merged with disaster-scenario role-play as foreplay.
With red lipstick ready to write on the balloon basket’s ad banner, Kate asks, “What’s something that everyone can understand?” After some thought, Myra replies with little confidence, “S.O.S.?” Perfect! But Kate uses the entire tube on the first letter, so she scissors her hand open for blood — an act that looks slightly less painful than Myra thinking seconds earlier. Once “S.O.S.” is properly smeared for distress-message purposes, Kate needs to bandage her hand, so it’s Myra’s turn to lose her shirt.
After relighting the balloon’s flame MacGyver-style with a vodka-filled condom and €10, Kate wants to block off the hole in the basket’s side for safety, thus requiring her to use her black leather pants for rope. Myra’s pants follow shortly, to lessen their weight load. With both rescue-ready damsels now clad solely in bra and panties, Doronin more or less marks things as “mission accomplished.”
Through the actions of his characters and those of Doronin as a filmmaker, S.O.S. Survive or Sacrifice exhibits a level of stupidity so aggressive, it’s almost admirable. From one shot to another, the balloon is consistently inconsistent in its proximity to water — especially egregious considering the level of control green-screen shooting affords him. On the subject of previous credits, most of the cast members have between zero and next to that, which shines through every scene — especially egregious considering how many do little more than gaze toward the sky and say, “Look! A balloon!” (or some variation), while for balance, our hot-air heroines point out watercraft in similar expository declarations.
A viewer may feel genuine embarrassment for Kaspar and Rosset having to wrestle with such material, and at least double that amount for doing so while passively modeling lingerie. The same viewer may wonder if Doronin planned that for distraction or is simply delusional. My vote is cast for the latter, as S.O.S. Shit on a Shingle’s closing credits crawl to the tune of a howler of a theme song with no underwire visuals to divert your attention from the ballad’s priority in conveying a cogent message finishes second — or maybe sixth — to forcing a rhyme: “Oh, baby, can you hear my S.O.S. / I just can’t stand my loneliness / Want to say no more, no less / I’m sending you my S.O.S. / And you’ll see me when you hear it / I will be impressed.”
Yet you will not. —Rod Lott
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