This film is a staggeringly muted cry for help that manifests as a beast within a beast within a fractured mind. Though it is also a film that goads and tests as it flips and contorts this equation with nimble and frustratingly assured regularity. David Blyth’s Wound is a gapping one. Rarely before have I had my senses so rubbed raw. After watching this film my eyeballs actually ached in my head. I didn’t feel sickened by the buffet of horrors that Mr. Blyth had so precisely laid out – I felt pain.
Wound – One of Horrors Truly Dark Pathways
There is nothing more emotionally disconcerting in film than to have a universally sensitive subject offered up as a central premise only to have it then shrugged off as frivolous subplot. But in the case of Wound it not only adheres to its double weight themes of incest and mental illness, ones that even today find merely a whisper in polite company, it rips into their skin and climbs deep down into their ashen and bitterly lonely souls.
Kate O'Rourke: An Unbearably Sad and Affecting Performance
It is here in this jagged and fearful world that Susan (Kate O'Rourke) must eke out her existence. In a performance that wonderfully encapsulates a woman dangling from the cusp of her own sanity O'Rourke never misses a beat. Even her lean, muscular physique seems to crackle like a slowly amassing ball of cross-threading rage as she struggles here to function.
The layers of isolation and paranoia that she exposes will resonate with many who have themselves suffered such as she. The pain of realizing that she cannot distinguish the tangible from the imagined. The voyeuristic futility of watching this woman as, stripped of her sanity, she fades ever helplessly into herself. The confederacy of deafness that surround the abused and their gagged cries for help. These are the shades of madness that haunt Susan. These are the demons that take human form before her. A torment incarnate from which there is no easy escape.
In Defense of the Extreme
Often there is a press junket gig that horror directors and producers dance as they struggle to give credibility to the extreme imagery they employ. Long drawn out debates emerge that pit these films against the factions that sit salivating in wait for yet another slice of the controversial. Admittedly there are a number of these productions that truly have no other agenda save to suckle off of their purposely-generated notoriety. But Wound ladles out its extremes in such a studied and visually arresting fashion that they never hint at being contrived or gratuitous. Each grotesquely exaggerated horror being but a looking glass to the bruised humanity that cowers shivering beneath it.
As I said this is an extremely painful watch. From the shockingly explicit scissorectomy of the films opening stanza to a birthing sequence that has still stubbornly laid claim to my brain there is not a lot here that doesn’t arrive labeled to incite. As such Wound is surely set for a bashing upon its forthcoming attempts at wider release. But spare a thought for that disenfranchised child curled fetal and alone at its core. It is she that the story is all about.
Wound
Susan: I'm sick of the waiting room. I have spent my life in the waiting room.
- Director… David Blyth (Death Warmed Up)
- Writer… David Blyth
- Producers… Andrew Beattie (Ergotism), David Blyth
- Cast:
- Kate O'Rourke (30 Days of Night) as Susan Purdue
- Te Kaea Beri (Compound) as Tanya
- Campbell Cooley (Spartacus: Blood and Sand) as Master John
- Sandy Lowe (Wound) as Mistress Ruth
- Brendan Gregory (Dead Creatures) as Neil
- Ian Mune (The Insatiable Moon) as Dr. Nelson
- DVD Release Date… TBA
- Filming Locations… Auckland, New Zealand
- Runtime… 76 minutes
- ILA Films
- Official Site: Wound
- View Trailer: Wound
- View Music Video: ’Knot Nine’ sung by Rosie Riggir for WOUND, edited by Eddie Larsen, directed by David Blyth.
Hari Navarro - Hari Navarro is Topic Editor for Suite 101's Horror Film section and Editor/ Writer at online horror review site, The Hell Street ...
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