by Chris Marshall:
Director: Taylor Sheridan
Cast: April Matson, Akeem Smith
Netflix Synopsis: Ten[1]
captives have 24[2]
hours to mount an escape from a locked room[3],
but they must endure excruciating pain to win their freedom.
Chris: I went
into last night’s film, Vile, with
the absolute lowest expectations. I’d never heard of it in my life, and the synopsis
made it sound like a complete Saw rip-off.
Which I suppose it kind of was, but it was so much better than I ever would
have anticipated.
It was not a great film, by any means, and I’d even say that
“good” is a stretch. But it was very entertaining, and I have no regrets at all
about my choice. When it comes to movies where people torture each other for an
hour and a half, you can do way worse.
The plot is simple enough. Nine people wake up and find
themselves trapped in a house. It’s dirty and dingy, but in every other way it’s
just like any other home. There aren’t any of the typical horror movie
trappings, except for a large video screen, where a pre-recorded message tells
them what they have to do to get out, and steel doors preventing them from
escaping.
It turns out that there’s an extremely expensive designer
drug that is made from a secretion that the brain makes when a person suffers
excruciating levels of pain. Our nine characters have 22 hours to put
themselves through enough pain to fill the meter on the screen up to 100%. Each
person has a vial (Vile/vial, get it?) implanted into the backs of their necks—presumably
attached to the brain stem—where the fluid starts to build up when they feel
pain.
I’ll spare you the play-by-play, but they have to develop a
plan about who will get tortured, how much they should each have to take, what
methods will be used, etc. It’s an intriguing premise, and I think the strength
of the movie is trying to play along and figure out what would be best if you
were in that situation.
 |
| Boiling water: Good idea! |
In my opinion, the characters made some very, very poor
decisions. Hey, I never said the movie was perfect. Admittedly, it’s hard to
imagine what it would truly be like if you were there, but I think “let’s break
each other’s collarbones” would be pretty low on my list of options. Some
people were smart. Putting a hot iron on the stomach is awful, but at least you’re
not crippled when it’s over. Same for ripping off your fingernails with a pair
of pliers. There are no good options,
so why don’t we at least minimize the long-term damage?
I’m not going to criticize the actors too harshly for their
performances, simply because I don’t think this kind of movie requires any
Oscar-worthy roles. Some were good, some were bad, but it didn’t have much of a
negative impact on the film. And much like Pontypool,
I feel like limiting most of the action to a single location worked mostly in
the movie’s favor.
I mentioned that I had never heard of Vile before. Apparently neither has anybody else. I discovered only
after watching it that it was released on DVD only a month ago. It has no
Rotten Tomatoes critic reviews, and it doesn’t have a Wikipedia page. This is a
hidden gem here.
Looking back on what I’ve written, I realize this has been a
pretty positive review. I wouldn’t recommend it to the vast majority of people
who will be reading this post, but for the select few who enjoy this particular
genre, I think it’s worth taking a look. If nothing else, it’ll stimulate
interesting discussions about the comparative values of different torture
strategies. And really, what else could you ask for out of a movie?
Justin:
Completely agree, Chris. This was the type of movie that I was hoping to watch
last night. There's a fine line with torture porn films. On one side you have
the films that want to wallow. They get so wrapped up in highlighting their
disturbing elements that they lack anything thrilling. They plod along. What we
have here is a film that tries to be disturbing but does so with a lot of
energy. The combination always works to entertain.
The character decisions are ridiculously stupid on how
they're tortured. The hot iron is definitely the way to go. The guy who chooses
that route laid out a blueprint for everyone. They looked at that and went with
a drill to the hand instead.
We also get my most hated slasher movie stereotype: the
unnecessarily mean person. You know who I'm talking about. It's the character
who takes the idea of “we have to do anything to survive” and just runs with
it. They're unrealistically cruel and frustrating. Everything they do is
crafted just to upset the audience, no matter how ridiculous that makes them.
The only reason for this character’s existence is to relieve our heroes of
their moral burden and provide gratification whenever they meet their grisly
end. Always so frustrating.
To counterbalance that there's also a rarely seen slasher
movie character: the strong, intelligent, action-oriented character. Normally
the physically strong character is a moron, and the genius is a wimp. In this
case we get the best of both characters and it feels so good.
 |
| Screwdriver to the knee: Bad idea! |
This film was good, but I think there was a chance to make
it much better. I think there's a lot of potential here for analysis and mining
of some metaphorical depth. The common consensus of the torture porn genre is
that it's a response to the torturing of enemy combatants at Guantanamo Bay and
other places, when it became policy to torture imprisoned potential terrorists
because we were scared of further attacks. The idea behind the theory is that torture
has become so commonplace that it's showing up in our multiplexes. It’s a
compelling theory. This movie works as evidence to the validity of that
statement. It's essentially the Milgram experiment cranked up to include actual
torture. Because if you truly believe that you'll die if you don't torture
someone, what’s to stop you?
This movie reminded me of one of my favorite zero budget
horror films of all time: Cube. Cube is much, much better and involves a
lot less torture. If Vile sounds
interesting, but a little too harsh, I would highly recommend Cube. Actually I'd recommend Cube for any reason. It's awesome.
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