FOR THE SAKE OF VICIOUS
Cert 18 ★★ On digital from tomorrow
The beer gardens are packed, the shoppers are queuing round the block and the big distributors have decided to hold off until the cinemas reopen on May 17.
So this week, we have this low-budget, star-free, gorefest leading the pack of the paid-for home releases.
It starts well with a tense and intriguing three-hander. It’s Halloween, and nurse Romina (Lora Burke) comes home to a scary surprise.
A bedraggled man called Chris (Nick Smyth) has broken into her house and battered her landlord Alan (Colin Paradine) into unconsciousness.
Chris claims Alan raped his daughter five years ago, got off in court on a technicality, and wants Romina to keep him alive so he can extract a confession.
Weirdly, the nurse doesn’t run screaming into the street. She treated Chris’s daughter in hospital, and seems to be at least by half in with his unhinged plan.
There’s a very clever slice of dark comedy when she tries to jovially chat to her son on the phone, while trying to stop Chris performing some sort of DIY operation with a wooden spoon.
Sadly, this film never lives up to its early promise. Shortly after hearing Alan protest his innocence, a gang of masked assailants storm the house and the film turns into yet another blood-splattered home invasion movie.
Withholding their motivation isn’t quite enough to hold our attention. The clumsily staged violence is preposterous and its ability to shock is very short-lived.