Tag: revenge

Darkness on the Edge of Town

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★★★½
“Before you embark on a journey of revenge, dig two graves.”

darknessSo Confucius (allegedly) said, and it appears the same is true in the Irish countryside – though I’m still not sure if the film’s title is a Bruce Springsteen reference. In this particular town, the sister of Cleo O’Callahan (Regan), turns up dead on the floor of a bar bathroom, her throat cut. Worse yet, Cleo and her BFF Robin (Willis) come across the bloody scene, after being alerted by the police activity. Who was responsible? Francis Macheath (Monaghan), the traveler to whom the sister owed money? Robin’s stalkery brother, Virgin (Gleeson), who had a bit of an unhealthy obsession with the dead girl? Or is the truth even more unpleasantly close to home? It matters, because Cleo has no confidence at all in the local cops’ ability to solve the class, and since she’s an Olympic-level shot, has the capacity to back up her bold statements of revenge. The question is, at what cost?

If Italian genre entries are known as “spaghetti Westerns”, does that make this a “potato Western”? Because there’s a lot here that seems to be borrowed by Ryan from the genre; while the landscapes may be a lot lusher than the Wild West, there’s no less lethal threats to be found, and Cleo’s taciturn shooter, out for vengeance, is only about a cheroot and some stubble from being Clint Eastwood. The film is actually not very concerned with revealing the killer – that particular aspect is answered very near the beginning, though I’m unsure if this could be a misstep, since it drains much potential suspense away. However, I get the feeling Ryan is much less concerned with “whodunnit” than why, as well as the question of how many more will end up falling victim to the resulting blood feud, and the toll it will eventually take on Cleo. Even though, there’s certainly a case to be made that Robin actually the more dangerous of the pair, thanks to her talent for manipulation.

There were elements that reminded me of Peter Jackson’s Heavenly Creatures, which drew a picture of a similar teenage relationship, whose very intensity helped lead to tragedy. The two Emmas, of necessity, are leaned upon to carry a great deal of the picture’s weight, and they are both very good in their roles, especially when, as during the 10 minutes which form the nearly-wordless opening sequence, they are forced to act. Ryan is perhaps too fond of these artistic flourishes, which tend to distract as much as they enhance, and you also need to exhibit some patience with the film, working with its rural rhythms, which are some way from the genre standards. However, the reward is certainly worth the effort, with the settings and characters providing a fresh new twist on a familiar formula.

Dir: Patrick Ryan
Star: Emma Eliza Regan, Emma Willis, Brian Gleeson, Sam Monaghan

The Great Chase

  By

★★★
“Driver with a thousand faces.”

greatchaseShinobu Yashiro (Shiomi) is nationally known as a race-car ace, but also moonlights as an undercover agent for Japanese law enforcement. That’s motivated by a desire to track down those responsible for the death of her father; he was a ship’s captain, convicted of smuggling drugs, who “committed suicide” in prison, though Shinobu thinks he was framed by the real perpetrator. She gets a possible lead, in the shape of Henry Nagatani and starts tracking him down, with the help of the brother and sister who run her fan-club (!) out of a florist’s shop (!!). Using a wide range of disguises, from a businessman through an old wonan to a nun and a Cambodian diplomat, Shinobu gets closer to the core of the conspiracy, and the man responsible, Onozawa (Ishibashi) though the cost on those she knows proves heavy indeed.

It’s kinda all over the place in terms of tone, charmingly naive and innocently light-hearted in some ways, such as the entirely gratuitous presence of Mach Fumiake, as a nightclub singer who follows up her songs with an in-club wrestling bout. [Fumiake was at the time, one of the starts of All Japan Women’s Wrestling, along with a tag team known as the “Beauty Pair”, whose name inspired the Dirty Pair]. Similarly, Shinoby’s disguises are also more than somewhat variable in terms of how convincing they are, and the drug-running through a convent, with guys dressed as nuns, may have inspired a similarly ridiculous plot thread in They Call Her Cleopatra Wong. Yet this can be grubbily sleazy, particularly in the second half. Onozawa likes to have rough sex while dressed in a bear suit, which reminded me of Walerian Borowczyk’s La Bête, released the same year, and there’s also an excessive amount of S&M, though Shiomi, naturally, remains above that sort of thing.

The action is probably not as frequent as Sister Street Fighter, and probably not as good, except for the final battle, where Shiomi gets to wield her nunchakus to excellent effect. Up until that, there are a lot of scenes where her kicks and punches don’t seem to have much force to them – to be honest, Fumiake comes over rather better in that department! The whole race-car driver aspect is rapidly discarded, and provides nothing more than the title sequence; I was expecting at least a car-chase so the heroine could show off her mad driving skills, but the makers apparently felt no particular need to justify their choice of name for the movie. Yet it moves along briskly, and you have to appreciate Shiomi’s enthusiastic performance, selling over-cooked lines such as: “Can’t you tell who I am? We’ve seen each other so many times. A woman gambler at times; a young gentleman at times; a tea-serving old lady at times; a nun in a black dress at times; and a white haired Cambodian woman. And, under the mask, my true self is the daughter of Masahiro Yashiro, who was brutally murdered by you five years ago – Shinobu Yashiro!” Half a star extra, purely for delivering that with a straight face.

Dir: Noribumi Suzuki
Star: Sue Shiomi, Eiji Go, Mach Fumiake, Masashi Ishibashi

Sweet Revenge

  By

★★
“More sour than sweet.”

sweet-revengeAh, the eighties. A time of big guns and even bigger hair, going by this underwhelming entry, which sees Allen as feisty and well-lacquered reporter Jillian Grey, who gets too close to the white slaving operation run by Mr. Cicero (Landau). [Even though he operates out of the Philippines, he’s still kidnapping girls out of bars in Los Angeles, which seems logistically inefficient, shall we say] She is abducted and offered for sale, only to break out of the auction with a couple of other American girls – the non-Caucasians are, it appears, left to their own survival – pausing only to rescue international perfume smuggler, Boone (Shackelford). Believing Cicero has also kidnapped her daughter, Jillian convinces Boone to join her and the girls in an attack on the white slaver’s compound – but to get the necessary weapons for that, they’ll first have to help out his outlaw friend, Buddha.

Shudderingly uneven in tone, this would have worked much better if the makers had figured out whether they were going for Romancing the Stone style hi-jinks or New World Pictures exploitation, because what we get here doesn’t work as either. The problem with the former is Boone, who demonstrates the thin line between endearing and irritating, falling firmly on the latter side, as the result of Shackleford’s painful lack of charisma and acting talent. The latter, meanwhile, is defused by the almost complete lack of nudity; save one bit of skinny-dipping, the rest of the film would likely merit a PG these days. There’s lots of running around with automatic weapons, of course, and an energetic amount of things being blown up, plus you get Gershon in what may well be her first feature role, apparently knowing martial arts and making far more of an impression than Shackleford. You can certainly see why, almost 20 years later, she’s still working and he isn’t.

Indeed, the film as a whole would be significantly improved if Boone was removed entirely, and the film concentrated solely on Grey and her sidekicks, even if the whole subplot about the heroine’s daughter is half-baked at best. Just have that happy-go-lucky trio going up against Cicero and his gang of (fortunately, incapable of aiming) goons, and you could have something looking like a better-financed version of an Andy Sidaris film. Though admittedly, you would need some more gratuitous hot-tub action as well, before it would reach that level. Instead, you have something trying to be too many things and appealing to too many audiences, instead ending up as a film which is no better than “somewhat satisfactory” for just about anyone.

Dir: Mark Sobel
Star: Nancy Allen, Ted Shackelford, Gina Gershon, Martin Landau

Eye for An Eye (1996)

  By

★★★
“No-nonsense crypto-fascist cinema.”

eyeforaneyeSubtle, this ain’t. But if you’re looking for a knee-jerk tale of vigilante vengeance, when the lily-livered justice system has failed, kowtowing instead to the “rights” of the guilty… This has certainly got you covered. Karen McCann (Field) is on the phone with her teenage daughter, planning a birthday party, when their call is interrupted by the arrival of serial rapist and murderer, Robert Doob (Sutherland). Karen can only listen as her daughter is brutalized by Doob, then bludgeoned to death with an ice sculpture. While his DNA is found at the scene, Doob walks because of a prosecutorial blunder, leaving Karen and husband Mack (Harris) aggrieved, and investigating detective Joe Denillo (Mantegna) powerless to help, even when Karen follows Doob and finds him apparently preparing to strike again. She joins a support group for those who also lost their kids, only to discover some of the members have an additional agenda; to help each other take revenge, where the law has been unable to do so. However, it turns out the FBI have also been monitoring the group, so what is Karen to do?

It’s entirely straightforward, pitting the perfect American family against an utter sleazeball; Sutherland is extremely creepy in his portrayal of Doob, and it’s quite eye-opening if you’re more used to him as (the similarly crypto-fascist) Jack Bauer. This reaches its apex when Doob confronts Karen and her surviving six-year-old daughter, Megan, whom he has been stalking, and whispers to the mother, “I don’t even really like kiddie pussy – but I’m willing to make an exception…” Yeah, I think that was probably the point at which the last vestiges of my liberal sensitivities checked out, and I could throw myself fully behind Karen’s mission. Just don’t expect anything approaching moral balance, or philosophical insight: this is rabble-rousing cinema at its most elemental. Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing; it’s following in a long line of such movies, going back at least as far as Dirty Harry in 1971.

On the other hand, I can’t really argue with Roger Ebert, when he wrote, “Movies like Eye for an Eye cheapen our character by encouraging us to indulge simplistic emotions – to react instead of analyzing.”  For this certainly is simplistic, and if Sutherland is impressively one-dimensions as the villain, Field is less convincing as Karen, in what needed to be a rather more nuanced performance, if it was going to rise above the material [There’s also an unexpected cameo from Cynthia Rothrock, of all people, as her self-defence teacher]. However, not all cinema needs to be “deep” or “thought-provoking,” and Schlesinger clearly has no such aspirations. Even if the targets here are hung low, it still hits more than it misses.

Dir: John Schlesinger
Star: Sally Field, Kiefer Sutherland, Ed Harris, Joe Mantegna

The Bride Wore Black

  By

★★★★
“I’ve got a little list, of society offenders who might well be underground,”

“No remorse, no fear… The justice of men is powerless. It can’t punish me. I’m already dead.
I died the same day David did. I’ll join him after I’ve had my revenge.”

brideworeblack2Undeniably highly influential, this 1968 French film starts with a woman, Julie Kohler (Moreau) trying to commit suicide. Stopped by her mother, she begins her mission: to track down the five men who were, to some extent accidentally, responsible for gunning down her husband, literally outside the church where they had just got married. She jets around the country, taking care of them, and crossing their names off a list in her notebook. Sound familiar at all? Yes, this is another one of the sources which Quentin Tarantino shamelessly ripped off was inspired by for Kill Bill, though obviously Kohler is nowhere near such a sword-swinging badass as The Bride, opting mostly for less arterial techniques. Tarantino says he never saw it, but for a devoted film fan who worked in a cult video store, that’s about as credible as his claim not to have seen City on Fire before making Reservoir Dogs. It also inspired, as documented elsewhere, the Kate Bush song The Wedding List, in which a widow seeks revenge for those who slew her husband.

Truffaut had just finished a lengthy set of interviews with Alfred Hitchcock, and you can see the influence here, not least in the score by frequent Hitchcock collaborator, Bernard Hermann, which riffs on the Bridal March to positive effect. Though the director spent so much time on set here arguing with his cinematographer, that Moreau ended up directing the actors for significant chunks. Truffaut expressed disappointment at the time of its release, and the critical response was underwhelming, but it was a commercial success and its reputation has grown over time. You can see why, with Moreau holding the episodic nature of the film together well, gluing the segments together devoted to each victim. She may not be able to overpower them physically, and the film works within that admirably, using her smarts and guile as a weapon, to reel them in and put them in a position where they are vulnerable. Her first victim is an excellent example, as she flirts with the man and eventually gets him to climb over a high balcony to retrieve her scarf. One little push, and she gets to cross a name off her list.

brideworeblack3This intelligence holds throughout the entire movie. At first, it seems a fatal mistake when she leaves behind a bit of evidence at the scene of a crime, and worse still when she then attends the funeral of the victim, where she is arrested by the police. However, this leads to a glorious moment of realization for the viewer, when you figure out that it is all part of her meticulously-crafted plan. The last shot of the movie follows that to its logical conclusion [well, logical if you accept that, in sixties France, men and women could be held in the same prison; hey, it’s France!], in an entirely satisfying way.  Its inevitability is part of its charm, because the viewer and the heroine know what’s about to happen, while everyone else is ignorant. In effect, you become Julie’s accomplice at the end, and it works brilliantly.

It’s an interesting choice to make her targets not evil or even particularly malicious; careless, is probably closer to the truth, and the cost of that carelessness is, arguably, far in excess of what it deserves. This gives the film a moral ambiguity that’s the complete opposite of Kill Bill, where the rest of the DIVAS were set up as utterly deserving of the Bride’s vengeful fury. This almost absurdist balance seems typically French, as does the heroine’s remorseless quest for payback; both aspects are reminiscent of Jean de Florette/Manon des Sources, albeit clearly without those two films’ pastoral setting and tone. The film is based on a 1940 novel by American noir author Cornell Woolrich, though some imprints have it published under Woolrich’s pseudonym, William Irish. The novel opens with a quote by Guy de Maupassant: “For to kill is the great law set by nature in the heart of existence! There is nothing more beautiful and honorable than killing!”, and this is an apt summary of what follows.

It wasn’t Truffaut, but another cornerstone of the French new wave, Jean-Luc Godard, who supposedly said “All you need for a movie is a gun and a girl” [though indications are, he was quoting D.W. Griffith]. While Godard certain included the combination often enough in his own work, it’s from Truffaut we get a more fully-fledged exploration of the theme, even if Julie barely touches an actual gun over the course of the film – it’s understandable, given the nature of her husband’s death, that she would adopt other approaches. This manages to be as much a satire of, as a loving homage to, both Hitchcock and the tropes of the “vengeful woman” genre, though plays it dead straight, so can be appreciated and enjoyed purely on its own merits. If certainly not lacking in style, Truffaut – and, perhaps more importantly, Moreau – also manage to deliver the substance, and almost fifty years later, this stands the test of time with rare persistence.

Dir: François Truffaut
Star: Jeanne Moreau, Jean-Claude Brialy, Michel Bouquet, Charles Denner
[a.k.a. La Mariée était en noir]

The Bride Wore Black
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Lila & Eve

  By

★★★★
“Loss + mother love = vengeance.”

lilaandeveDriven by a strong and intense performance from Davis, as Lila, a mother who has lost her son to a drive-by shooting in Atlanta, this offers a more thoughtful take on the “vigilante vengeance” genre. Feeling abandoned by the authorities, and not impressed with the forgiving approach of a support group, she finds companionship in another grieving parent there who feels the same way. Eve (Lopez) urges Lila to take action against those responsible, and together, they work their way up the chain of pushers and street-dealers, to find the man behind it all. However, their actions bring them unwanted attention, both from the detective investigating the resulting murders (Whigham) and the boss at the top of the ladder. It’s entirely possible that Lila’s thirst for revenge could cost her everything, not least her other son, Justin (Caldwell).

It’s a little hard to discuss this, since there’s one aspect which talking about would require a major spoiler, though it’s something I figured out early on: the clues are there, if you look for them. While important, it’s not something on which the film stands or falls, however, and I don’t think figuring it out early hurt my appreciation of this. I was a little concerned early that this was going to be sappy and sentimental, not least because of the presence of Lifetime Films as one of the producers. However, it isn’t that way at all: instead, this is a gritty and entirely credible look at deep personal tragedy, and the reaction to it, even if the final act topples over the edge into implausibility. Davis is key, and is particularly impressive: you can see the pain in her eyes, and how that motivates her to engage in violence which, in some ways, is arguably as senseless as the slaying of her son.

However, the other aspects are mostly solid as well. Lopez provides feisty back-up, egging Lila on whenever her drive falters, and even the cops are portrayed as credible characters, who behave intelligently, as far as their limitations allow them. This makes for a sharp contrast to some similar films I’ve seen, most recently Eye for an Eye, which were little more than a hymn to the joys of vigilante action. Here, you get the negative aspects as well, such as when the mother of one of Lila’s victims turns up to the support group, only to receive a rather mixed reaction. This moral muddying of the water shifts the tone into trickier waters, and as mentioned, I’m not sure Stone negotiates through these successfully to the end credits. However, Davis’s performance is damn near impeccable, and is mesmerizing throughout. If there were any fairness in Hollywood, this would be among the Oscar nominated performances for 2015; if I’m not holding my breath there, you still won’t see much better this year.

Dir: Charles Stone III
Star: Viola Davis, Jennifer Lopez, Ron Caldwell, Shea Whigham

Chop Shop

  By

★
“Just because you CAN make a movie…”

chopshop…doesn’t mean you should. For this movie had a shot at setting a new low: I was serious contemplating awarding it no stars at all, before it fractionally redeemed itself in the final reel. Key word there: fractionally, because there is hardly a level of this which is not awful. Made in 2003, it’s set a decade or so previously and, if you’re being particularly charitable, you could perhaps think the early nineties video and audio quality is an attempt to capture the era in question. The sound – often an issue on micro-budget movies – is particularly terrible, ranging from muffled and inaudibly quiet to ear-splitting loud (and equally inaudible). But there is hardly an aspect here which is not cringe-inducingly bad in execution. Even the overall structure is so flawed, you wonder at what point it ever made sense.

There’s a narrator (Greer), who supposedly is telling the story of Lisa Stewart (Michaels) based on a journal she just happened to find, in which Lisa had documented her entire life – never mind that the journal is a thin school notebook containing barely any content, or that Lisa apparently abandoned this precious record without a second thought, for the narrator to find. As with so many other factors e.g. the scene of Lisa jogging with her journal, the purpose of the narrator is not clear. It seems to be to burble inconsequential rubbish such as – and I paused the movie specifically to write this down – “Now, I never had a near-death experience – but, Lisa, she nearly did.” There is a post-credits sequence which explains who the narrator is speaking to; this makes about as much sense as the rest of the film, which would be not very much.

The story being retold is set mostly at a car-repair place where the heroine takes her vehicle to be fixed after it was in a wreck. When she comes back to check on it, she is assaulted, raped by multiple employees, and dumped back in her own apartment by one of the workers, who doesn’t have the stomach to finish her off as ordered. A fatal mistake! For Lisa’s psyche has been shattered by the attack, and she returns to the compound on Halloween Night to wreak revenge on those who abused her. And, presumably, to pick up her car. It’s clearly aiming to be I Spit On Your Grave but doesn’t have anything like the necessary guts on either end of the rape-revenge story-line, though watching Stewart in psycho mode is at least more fun than watching her as a thoroughly unconvincing Buppie. I particularly laughed like a drain at the use of a vacuum cleaner as an offensive weapon, which could be (yet almost certainly isn’t) intended some kind of pseudo-feminist statement on the role of women in the workplace. Wretched in virtually every way, if there was ever such a thing as getting your artistic license revoked, the creator here should be summoned to court.

Dir: Simuel Denell Rankins
Star: Shannon Michaels, Shannon Greer, Rob Rose, Mark Schell

Bound To Vengeance

  By

★★
“Bound to disappoint”

boundforvengeanceI’ve been watching horror movies for over 30 years now, and appreciate that a certain amount of idiotic behaviour is to be expected. People will go into cellars. They will stand right beside the apparently-dead body of a masked killer. They will trip over those pesky tree roots. They will split up. That goes with the territory. But this entire film is predicated on a terrible decision which the lead character makes early, then refuses to reconsider, though the results clearly indicate its wrongness and she could change her mind at any time. Eve (Ivlev) has been captured by the psychopathic Phil (Tyson), but lures him into a trap by feigning unconsciousness, bludgeoning him with a brick and chaining hum up in her place. Escaping the house, she finds herself in the middle of nowhere, but gets the keys to the truck. At this point, what absolutely any sensible person would do, is high-tail it out of there, notify the authorities and let them take over.

But then, there’d be no film. Instead, she takes at face value Phil’s claim that he has a number of other houses, also containing kidnapped women [itself, a scenario that begs the question, “Why?” Wouldn’t it make more sense to have one large house with multiple rooms?]. Worse yet, she decides to make him lead her to them, so she can free the other captives. Even after neither the first nor the second go anything like as desired, Eve plunges on, apparently for no better reason than a touching belief that, hey, third time’s the charm. Of course, if she gave up, she (and we) would never find out the connection to her boyfriend (Kjornes), crudely telegraphed by the director through frequent inserts of shaky home-video footage of the two of them, interacting before her abduction. Mind you, nor would it allow for the moral to become “All men are bastards” rather than “This man is a bastard”; as is, there is not a single redeemable male character in the entire thing.

Credit is due for focusing almost entirely on the revenge side of the equation: we know Eve has been through hell by the point we meet her, and Cravioto doesn’t feel the need to have that aspect portrayed at length. Ivlev and Tyson are both decent in their roles, with the former demonstrating a steady growth in personal badassness that is adequately gratifying, and comes to a satisfactory conclusion with one final decision which actually does make sense. It is an enormous shame that everything leading up to the moment is based on a horrendously-flawed concept, which the film doesn’t attempt to acknowledge – hell, the worst genre film is still required to have a scene of someone waving their cellphone around and muttering, “No signal…” Even if some of the other aspects are laudable, as mentioned above, the overall result is irrevocably weakened, and won’t stick in your mind for any good reasons.

Dir: J. M. Cravioto
Star: Tina Ivlev, Richard Tyson. Kristoffer Kjornes
a.k.a. Reversal

Assassin’s Run

  By

★★★
“Killer dance moves.”

assassinsrunPrima ballerina Maya Mason (Skya) has it all: great career, billionaire oil-magnate husband Michael (Slater), loving daughter. But it all comes tumbling down when Michael is assassinated in an apparent coup d’etat of his business empire. The final piece is a set of documents, bearer shares that confer control of the company to whoever has them, and the players behind the predatory takeover bid, think Maya knows where these essential certificates are. She insists she has no clue, but is not believed, and to apply pressure, she is framed for drug trafficking and thrown into jail: not where anywhere wants to be, least of all a classical dancer. Worse is to follow, when they kidnap her daughter, but that’s a step too far, and Maya vows to use her very particular set of skills, skills she has acquired over a long career, to make her a nightmare for the people concerned. Or, if you want the one-word version: ballet-fu.

If you came into this expecting anything at all like the cover, you’re in for a surprise, as it is likely the most utterly misleading of all time. Neither Slater nor Hauser are actiony types at all in this; rare though it is for a film to undersell the action heroine element, for our purposes we’re all the happier with the end product! It’s certainly a new style, even if we remember that Michelle Yeoh, for example, learned ballet well before martial arts,  beginning at the age of four. It’s a shame it’s not put to significant use until the second half, starting with a prison fight after another inmate decides she wants Maya’s ring. This is finished off with a barrage of spin-kick after spin-kick after spin-kick, and is pretty awesome. There’s also a good brawl in a bathroom, but you’re left wishing for more, since it’s something deserving of greater use, and Skya’s flexibility is awesome. Yes, she can kick behind her head, thanks for asking.

She proves herself somewhat multi-talented here, also co-directing and singing the poignant song over the end credits – Chris decided she wants it played at her funeral, but if we played every song she had decided to use, it would be a three-week event… There are some aspects of the plot that don’t make a great deal of sense – why do the villains bother to frame Maya, when they could just kidnap her and torture the certificates’ location out of her? And, I have to say, her darling little daughter is much more whinily irritating, rather than the “adorable” for which the film is clearly aiming. Some of the other performances come over a little bit “English as a second language” – including Hauser as Maya’s former boyfriend – yet it moves along briskly enough, and Skya sells both the dramatic and physical aspects with enough credibility to make for a decent 90 minutes of fun.

Dir: Robert Crombie + Sofya Skya
Star: Sofya Skya, Christian Slater, Cole Hauser, Angus Macfadyen
a.k.a. White Swan

Evangeline

  By

★½
“Revenge – less eaten cold than luke-warm leftovers.”

evangelineWhile I can’t find any sources to back my memory, I vaguely recall hearing a while ago about plans, either for a sequel or a reboot, to make a female version of The Crow. This seems like much the same thing, though based on the incoherent results here, they probably should bury the concept alongside Brandon Lee. Eva (de Lieva) is a preacher’s daughter, who has apparently led a sheltered life before enrolling at college. It’s not long, however, before she is attending her first frat party; unsurprisingly, this leads to her driving the big white bus. Things then go from bad worse, as a subsequent invitation from a fellow student leads to her being drugged, taken to the forest, gang-raped by a trio led by Michael Konner (Harmon), and left for dead. Or perhaps actually dead. For what happens next is either a) Eva’s corpse is possessed by some kind of demonic entity, and restored to life to take revenge, or b) she merely thinks that’s what happened, this being her psyche’s way of explaining and justifying said revenge.

Both, widely disparate explanations are equally plausible, and writer/director Lam seems to have little or no interest in clarifying matter, perhaps because, from what I’ve read, she was more interested in making “feminist response horror,” whatever that is. As the quote mis-attributed to Sam Goldwyn put it, “If you have a message, call Western Union.” While I’ve no problems at all with messages in films, feminist or otherwise, they should always be secondary to the film, and you don’t get the feeling that’s the case here. Admittedly, this is because so little effort is put into telling a decent story: when you’ve so little idea of what’s going on, there’s no reason to care about any thing the creators are trying to say. Here, for example, there is also a confused and superfluous subplot about a PTSD-afflicted veteran, living in the woods, as well as an apparent serial killer, “Mr K”. The purpose of both these are obscure, since neither seem to add much of significance.

This is a bit of a shame, since the look of the film is much more decent than its content, aspects such as the photography, sound design and special effect meshing to an okay degree – even if some of the visual techniques do appear to have been lifted wholesale from a far better film about someone’s sanity falling apart and/or demons, Jacob’s Ladder. That creature, mostly seen in its grey, spindly fingers, is undeniably a creepy motif. However, particularly in this genre, style can only take you so far, before it emphasizes and exacerbates a lack of content. In that area, I kept hoping the film was going to deliver enough to justify its existence; but the end-credits rolled, and I was still left entirely unsatisfied.

Dir: Karen Lam
Star: Kat de Lieva , Richard Harmon, Mayumi Yoshida, David Lewis