9th April 2016, 05:12 PM
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 | Cult King Cult Labs Radio Contributor
Senior Moderator | | Join Date: Mar 2011 Location: Lancashire | |
The Seasoning House (2012)
Set in the Balkans, Angel, an orphaned deaf mute girl is enslaved in a house where the girls there are forced to prostitute themselves for the military. Being small she manages to negotiate the house using the crawlspaces and spaces between the walls until one day the murderer of her family shows up.
For quite a while i was wondering why i was bothering to watch The Seasoning House. After a brutal opening ten minutes nothing seemed to happen other than Angel tending to the prostitutes needs and showing how she moves in the hidden darkness. The over riding feeling i had was how grim it all was. It all felt so genuinely unpleasant. The girls were treated terribly. Forced to have sex with hulking guys who beat them within an inch of their lives whilst ****ing them, then seeing the girls patched up by a loathsome doctor on the payroll before enduring the next client. It was all sleazy in the extreme and certainly posed questions for me regarding the mentality of these soldiers or perhaps just the script writers. All in all really depressing without any chinks of light.
Around the forty minute mark it all kicked into gear with the reintroduction of Sean Pertwee and his little gang of homicidal mercenaries. The film developed a fully fledged story line and Angel had other things to do rather than tending to sexually broken girls. The second half of the film was in fact brilliant. I was gripped completely as Angel was suddenly stuck in a fight for survival against the soldiers.
British director Paul Hyett's film is a starkly brutal affair. The gore is hard going and very realistic looking which added to the ultra nihilistic feel the film has. Even though the second half lightens a little that horrific air still pervades and the film features a very downbeat ending which is left open for interpretation. Although given what she'd endured during the first 85 minutes i don't think Angel would have had too many problems getting away...but that's another story or a sequel perhaps.
Recommended.
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