Hooptober 7.0

19/31 - 4/6 decades 2010s

I hadn’t heard much about this, but picked up during a recent Arrow sale and only knew when I fired it up that it packed a strong punch and was inspired by true events.

This is very difficult to watch at times, viscerally gripping and overwhelmingly painful.   It’s odd to say this is beautifully directed, yet it is.  Ben Young has done an astonishing job of painting a harrowing picture with the able help of the three lead actors.  That it is culled from true events (even if a pastiche of various different stories) makes that much more horrifying.

Fairly quickly we are placed right in the center of the film in the house where most of the action takes place.  The film doesn’t shy away from making it clear what the couple is doing to its victims even if it wisely chooses to avoid showing anything graphic.  The suggestions are still grim and relentlessly unpleasant.  

The real star here is Emma Booth who transformed herself for the role of the wife, and carries much of the emotional weight of the story with her complicit cooperation in the horror mixed with pain and desperation.  For the film to work, you have to buy her arc and she sells it admirably.  The young actress playing their victim is also amazing as her interplay with Booth and steely resilience amidst her terror propels the narrative.

I wish the Arrow disc had an interview with the director, but the interviews with the cast were interesting if short.