Thursday, January 31, 2013

Vile (2011, Taylor Sheridan)

Released last September from Inception Media Group is a new horror film in the "gore-ture" genre appropriately titled Vile. Directed by Taylor Sheridan, who some might recognize as Deputy Hale on Sons of Anarchy, this film features lots of nasty, bloody violence mixed with people screaming at the top of their lungs. Always a good time.

Vile is the story of a few friends who go camping (nope, not what you're expecting) and end up being gassed and kidnapped by a woman pretending to be stranded on the side of the road (told you). They are brought to a house with no exits and awaken to find another group of people trapped with them. They all have vials (play on words with the title?) connected to the back of their necks and are shown a video explaining why they are there. Apparently when the body is in pain it excretes chemicals that are used for research and the victims trapped in the house must hurt each other enough to fill up the vials to be released.

Needless to say, this is some fucked up stuff. Basically, after the first 15 minutes, the remainder of the film is a series of torture and violence. Not really my thing, but I really have to hand it to the film makers (and the cast) here. This film is one of the few examples of this particular genre that really made me squirm. Every burning hot iron to the stomach and fingernail being ripped off made me jump in my seat and cringe. I've seen some messed up films before but never have I felt so defeated afterwards as I did with Vile. Fortunately, I'm sure this is exactly what the director was going for and he hit it out of the park in that respect. The cast is also pretty good, with the exception of a few main characters - particularly the long haired guy (who looked like David Spade Jr.) and the loud-mouthed, bitchy girl who is so unlikeable I was kind of happy everytime it was her turn to suffer (does that make me a bad person?) I still have mixed feelings about the film but for what it is trying to accomplish, it definitely succeeds. The gore was all very realistic and nasty and the interaction between the characters was believable. Another person I will have to give credit to is the sound man because everytime someone was hurt, the sound effects used were disgustingly realistic and added so much to the terror. If you love extreme horror films with nasty FX then this is the film for you.

RATING: 7/10


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