And so Midnight Movie number 2: Vile. Directed by Taylor Sheridan, Vile managed to create one of the most uncomfortable atmospheres of the festival. Truly nasty, grim, violent and draining, the film for most of its running time shapes up to be something really quite special but, unfortunately, loses any credibility thanks to a dire ending. It may sound like the fate of most entries in the rapidly dying torture porn genre but in the case of Vile, this really is genuinely more of a shame than it sounds.
The film opens as a group of friends are targeted by a perfume selling older woman who in actual fact is something of an Avon service from the bowels of Hell. Before they have time to say thanks but no thanks, she has donned a gas mask and sent them all into a deep sleep. Waking up in a strange warehouse full of other strangers, the ground find themselves tied to chairs with vials (geddit) surgically attached to the back of their heads. A video then tells them that they have 22 hours to fill the vials with a chemical that is released from the brain when a person experiences pain.
So there we go. What follows, as can be expected, is an hour of self inflicted organised pain as the group take it in turns to reach the 100% mark that will unlock the doors and free them all. Vile almost immediately makes itself more interesting than just a film with a sick premise in its handling of personalities. There is a fantastic early discussion as to whether the men should only take part which provoked laughs and passionate ‘gender roles’ arguments from both the men on screen and the entire Frightfest audience.
Surprisingly dark humour also comes from the refreshingly organised manner that the cast get themselves together. The women don’t run around screaming, the men don’t break down and punch walls and the group avoid predictably breaking off into opposing factions. Instead, they pull their heads together and decide to each take a slice of the pain, the whole group attacking one member, then another, then another in a disturbingly calm manner. But as you can imagine, any moments of humour in Vile are soon quashed: this is a grim picture. Tweezers, boiling water, irons and a whole host of nasty rusty tools are used to create a solid hour of wincing.
From the flames of this nasty film arrived the most evil character seen at Frightfest. Kelly (Stefanie Braboza) (and yes I did have to look up the name as after an hour of group mutilation, faces and names tend to blur into one another) establishes herself as enemy number one early on by suggesting the ‘Men only’ policy but further makes herself hard to love by going way overboard in the first group beating by breaking a pair of legs. In fact, a clear indication of how effective Kelly is, is that when it was her turn to be hurt, in a film of solemn, brutal, pain-induced awkward silences, Frightfesters across the cinema passionately cheered.
Unfortunately, for all the good, interesting things that Vile does, in the end all the violence and nastiness just doesn’t have a point. There is a hint all the goings on in the film are to help with some form of medication, but rather than push the idea into a clear message, it remains only a hint and coupled with the fact that there really is no pay off, consequently it’s hard not to think ‘what’s the point?’. If the film was brave enough to follow a film like Martyrs (2008) in having a bold, damning resolution that had something to say, the violence in the film would have at least had some form of wider context to help make the bitter pill easier to swallow. Instead, we are left with an hour and a half of people beating each other up. Nothing more, nothing less.
As it is, the lack of point leave Vile a despicable, pointless near-miss that’s near impossible to recommend. Paul took to the stage prior to the screening and said that he hopes Vile will be torture porn’s final bow. If it is (and I’m sure most agree with Paul), it is something of a shame that the much despised sub-genre will go out with a nasty whimper rather than leaving with something to say.
No comments:
Post a Comment