2020 | Canada | Directed by Dusty Mancinelli & Madeleine Sims-Fewer
Logline: A troubled woman on the edge of divorce returns home to her sister after years apart. But when her trust is betrayed, she embarks on a vengeful crusade.
There’s a saying, “Revenge is a dish best served cold.” In the debut feature collaboration between Mancinelli and Sims-Fewer, who have both made several short films together, they shove revenge into a freezer and listen to it scream. This is a tale of psychosis and vengeance for steely horrorphiles of the slow-burn embrace. It is a drama that will sear your sensibilities, and grind your humanity to a fine powder and scattered to the wind. If you’ve seen Tim Roth’s The War Zone, you’ll appreciate the kind of harrowing journey you’re in for.
Miriam (Sims-Fewer) and her husband Caleb (Obi Abili) are headed to her sister and hubbie’s country retreat, after a lengthy time apart for the siblings. But there is big trouble in little paradise, as it becomes immediately apparent that this married couple have drifted apart and communication has broken down. The relevance of intimacy and confidence is paramount, and the spiralling reverberations of loneliness and rejection will tighten like long screws into a coffin lid.
Sex and death are part and parcel with the rape-revenge sub-genre. Here the co-writing directors have taken familiar elements and torn them asunder. There will be no normal justice, no grim satisfaction, only abject horror - physical and psychological - and a dark, tunnelling despair. Quite simply put, Violation is one of the heaviest, most uncompromising films I have seen in a long time. On the surface this makes it a difficult recommendation. It’s a very intimate, complex film, full of visual symbolism and punctuated by surreal inserts.
Lars Von Trier’s polarising Antichrist comes to mind; the use of flora and fauna in juxtaposition to the grotesquerie that will hit you like a hammer, the rural, tranquil setting, the lingering creatures, the disintegration of the mind, the betrayal and the studied rage just below the surface.
Miriam has a dysfunctional relationship with her younger sister, Greta (Anna Maguire), whom she feels has always treated her unjustly. There is love between them, but it is damaged, needs repair, if that can be made, and neither seems like they want to do the restoration work. Greta’s husband, Dylan (Jesse LaVercombe), is happy to be a bridge between them, while Caleb glowers and maintains a petulance.
A campfire drinking session leaves Miriam and Dylan alone, where drunken truths are innocently exposed, and in the wee hours misbehaviour is taken advantage of, and friendship is abused. The consequences of which will be devastating.
Violation’s mise-en-scene, with Andrea Boccodoro’s seething score, and Adam Crosby’s tenebrous cinematography is a truly stunning combination. Frequent use of extreme closeup, creating a disturbingly sensual experience - even, controversially, during the rape sequence - which is contrasted with the matter-of-fact graphic presentation of the male nudity - a key contrast to any other rape-revenge movie before it - and the horrendously realistic violence, featuring some of the most impressive practical gore effects I’ve seen in years.
Miriam has emotional baggage, yet her psychological state of mind slides without brakes into full-blown psychosis, as she goes about her methodical dispatch. It’s enough to make you gag, and Miriam throws up very authentically as her character - and the actor - becomes overwhelmed by the horrendous nature of her self-imposed task. This is a disquieting, tour-de-force sequence.
Mancinelli and Sims-Fewer make the decision to cut up the narrative, so that the events happen in a non-linear way. This is confusing at first, frustratingly so, but I later appreciated how it reflected the fragmented state of Miriam’s irreparably damaged psyche. Yes, her body has been violated, but it is her mind and trust that has been torn apart. And, so, she retaliates in the only way she sees fit, an eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth, or thereabouts. There is a terrible beauty to this nightmare.
Miriam seemingly tries to mend some of her shattered self and the broken bond with her sister. She relates a nightmare to Greta, as if to help clarify (to herself) her heinous retribution. Greta has struggled to comprehend her sister’s increasingly bizarre behaviour, and she warily offers an olive branch of affection, telling her sister she loves her.
Miriam needs more than a hug and reassurance. She was a woman on the edge of the abyss, staring across like a deer in the headlights, and she was pushed into the void, her flailing arms pulling down with her whoever was closest. She was violated, and so she must slay. Greta was close by, but not in reach, she will remain in her own shadow, her loss shrouded, as her sister inexorably crumbles.
Violation is definitely not for those easily upset, or squeamish, indeed you have been warned. If you can deal with its structure and languid pace, this film packs a seriously impressive wallop, and it ends, frayed and ruinous, memorable like only the most powerful and unforgiving horror movies can be.