'Suicide Squad: Hell to Pay' Is DCAMU's Best Installment Yet

In Suicide Squad: Hell to Pay, the 10^th movie of the DC Animated Movie Universe, Amanda Waller sends Task Force X – composed of Deadshot, Harley Quinn, Bronze Tiger, Captain Boomerang, Killer Frost, and Copperhead – to retrieve a supernatural item that holds power over the afterlife, as other interested parties are in pursuit of this McGuffin as well.

So is it better than the live-action Suicide Squad movie?  I think so.  It nails what a Suicide Squad adventure should be, and effectively depicts the dysfunctional, powder-keg dynamics in a group of villains being forced to perform black ops missions.

The movie is dark, gritty, and violent – as it should be.  But it doesn’t dwell on just gratifying through being those things.  It also goes out of its way to add a sense of depth that most direct-to-video animated comic book movies don’t usually have.  At one point, it even goes surprisingly spiritual.

Moreover, it’s also funny, containing the dosage and kind of humor appropriate to its tone and theme.  I genuinely laughed out loud a couple of times.

Aside from the Suicide Squad, a couple of recognizable DC characters also make appearances in this movie in varying degrees of importance to the plot.  But what’s shocking is the narrative’s willingness to kill a couple of them off, meaning they would no longer be available to future DCAMU movies.  This aspect significantly increases the movie’s levels of surprise and stakes.

Suicide Squad: Hell to Pay is not free from imperfections at parts, but it’s a great DC animated movie as a whole.  It’s entertaining, action-packed, humorous, and even thought-provoking.  In fact, I believe it’s the franchise’s best installment yet (taking the spot from TeenTitans: The Judas Contract).