Adapted from Max Booth III’s novella, 2021’s We Need to Do Something offers a tale of a family stuck together in close quarters. Perhaps it should get retitled as Pandemic Lockdowns: The Movie.

During a brutal storm, father Robert (Pat Healy), mother Diane (Vinessa Shaw), teen daughter Melissa (Sierra McCormick) and adolescent son Bobby (John James Cronin) attempt to ride out the weather inside their house. They come up with a variety of attempted diversions but none distract from the extreme events.

In particular, Melissa starts to worry that something more threatening than bad weather impacts the family. Eventually they become literally trapped in their home and they need to deal with surprising problems.

To a distinct degree, Do feels like 10 Cloverfield Lane: characters stuck in one place while mysterious events happen outside. However, Lane included actual characters and plot beats, which we don’t really find here.

Though at the start, Do displays some intrigue. We feel somewhat curious to learn of the situation in which the family becomes stuck, especially because supernatural possibilities arise.

However, we just find too little actual story or drama to sustain 97 minutes of film. This leaves us with about 70 minutes of boredom, punctuated with occasional flashes of gross-out violence.

Do often feels like a stage play, especially when it forces characters into bizarre monologues. These come out of nowhere and feel disconnected from the main story, so they simply fill space.

Though most of Do stays in the one location, we find occasional flashbacks to Melissa and girlfriend Amy (Lisette Alexis). These exist for expository reasons and connect to the main plot, but they still feel like a mistake.

The flashbacks dissipate the claustrophobia. While they communicate some useful information, the way they damage tension becomes a problem.

Not that there’s a lot of harm to be done since the movie comes with so many issues. Do just gets weirder and dumber as it goes, like the filmmakers hope these odd choices will convince us of the existence of cinematic cleverness.

The movie doesn’t make a lick of sense, however, and it fails to even bother with an actual ending or rudimentary explanations for what we saw. This feels more like copout than cleverness, and whatever potential Do boasts goes into the crapper.

We Need to Do Something appears in an aspect ratio of approximately 1.66:1 on this Blu-ray Disc. The movie offered a generally good but erratic image.

Sharpness became the weakest link, as more than a few soft shots materialized. Some of these appeared intentional, but they didn’t always make much sense within the story, so I found them to seem odd at times.

Still, most of the film came with fairly positive delineation, and I saw no issues with jagged edges or moiré effects. Edge haloes remained absent, and I saw no source flaws.

Colors went with a muted mix of teal and amber. These could seem a bit dense but they felt decent overall.

Blacks were largely deep and dark, while shadows demonstrated reasonable clarity. This became a more than acceptable presentation but not a memorable one.

Similar thoughts greeted the movie’s DTS-HD MA 5.1 soundtrack, as it lacked a lot of punch. Even with scenes of extreme weather, the soundfield seemed limited.

Of course, a lot of the soundscape remained subdued because so much fo the film kept the family stuck in one location. These scenes came with good stereo music as well as a decent sense of environment.

Nonetheless, the track tended to fail to take much of advantage of its sonic possibilities. Some violent sequences used the surrounds in a positive way but these remained rare and not as engaging as one might expect.

Audio quality seemed fine, with speech that came across as natural and concise. Music offered clear tones and showed appropriate range.

Effects appeared accurate and tight, with good range. This was a decent track but it didn’t excel.

The disc opens with ads for Come True, See For Me, and Demonic. No trailer for Do or other extras pop up here.

A claustrophobic thriller, We Need to Do Something comes with the bones of an effective tale. However, the filmmakers never know how to take advantage of the positives, so the end result seems sluggish and dull. The Blu-ray comes with decent picture and audio but it lacks bonus materials. The flick goes nowhere of interest. audio but it includes no bonus materials. Adrien Brody can do better than this.