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A story of the breaking down of spirit and identity, the film starts with the image of a
screaming child running through a ramshackle warehouse, dirty, bloody and obviously
in distress and eerily paralleling that infamous Vietnam photo of the napalmed child
screaming as her clothes and flesh burnt away. The girl is Lucie, a child abused and
beaten who has escaped and is now in a home but refusing to talk about her
experience. Though the doctors are trying to help Lucie, they cannot, the only person
she trusts is her roommate Anna. Flashing forward, fifteen years later we find a typical
family having breakfast on a Sunday morning, teenage kids, girl and boy giving each
other grief, dad and mum having breakfast when the door bell rings and their world
explodes in shotgun blasts, blood, guts and the realisation that nothing is what it
seems. Lucie has found her abusers and exacted revenge. Anna is still there to help
her and as Lucie’s memories and her realities become skewed we find that Lucie has
been haunted all these years by the woman she had to leave behind when she made
her own escape.
But there is much, much more to the story, much more going on.
Soon enough Anna will discover a secret room, a chamber that will remove any doubts
she has about Lucie’s story, about this seemingly innocent family. And though at first
you may have doubts, just remember Belgium, Jersey, Guantanamo – nothing seems as
farfetched as it once was in this world. To give away any more would ruin the story
but this is a film that will take your breath away again and again.
The imagery is so strong, so painful, the confusion and hurt of the victims hits you so
hard and that is just the first forty minutes! From there the viewer is taken into
places that we rarely want to think about. Taking the faceless, brutal face of
bureaucracy, the bullying in school and work, the bastardising in the army, pledging in
college, the breaking of your spirit to a new and vicious but systematic level, the film
explores the notion of martyrdom, of transfiguration, of what lies beyond. It is not a
pretty journey but it will stay with you for a long, long time.
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Some people have labelled this is torture porn or some ridiculous notion there of.
These people know nothing. This is not a film about sexuality or one of those revenge
flicks or anything like a Hostel or its derivatives. Simply put this is one of the best
films I’ve seen for many a year and deserves the accolades it has been receiving from
those with a little more grey matter in their heads. See this and be stunned again at
just what can be achieved in the horror movie genre.
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