E Gore
Donkey Punch, Cineworld Broad Street, Birmingham, Tuesday June 22 2008, 7pm.
Who knew that Eli Roth's Hostel, in which hormonal Westerners are butchered abroad for their unethical behaviour, would be the single most influential film of the latter part of this decade? Goes to show that if you make a cheap film that brings in huge profits and critical kudos you instantly create a template for others to follow. Oliver Blackburn's Donkey Punch at least comes to the slightly different and entirely reasonable conclusion: Brits aboard are (quite literally) their own worst enemy.
So we have three girls from Leeds abroad on holiday hooking up with a British crew of likely lairy lads on a luxury yacht. Ecstasy and hardcore Russian drugs leads to orgiastic ecstasy and softcore sex, until things take a sudden swerve to the worse when the titular sex act leaves one of the participants in the fleshy fivesome experiencing the 'petit mort' a little too literally for everyone's comfort. It's then every lad and ladette for themselves as the bodycount piles up amidst recriminations, cover-ups and sheer lunatic bloody-mindedness.
Donkey Punch has been described as a kind of Dead Calm for the Ibiza set, benefitting from a decent soundtrack that includes Parallax View faves The Knife and Peter Bjorn and John. While there are numerous faults (banal, seemingly semi-improvised dialogue, wavering performance levels, all-over-the-place plot structure), some of these weaknesses actually help Donkey Punch overcome the main danger in making this type of movie: formulaic predictability. The result is a bloody mess from just about any perspective, but remains gripping, stylish entertainment, different from the norm but not so out-there that people won't get it, and seems destined for cult status when it finds its natural home on DVD.
Donkey Punch, Cineworld Broad Street, Birmingham, Tuesday June 22 2008, 7pm.
Who knew that Eli Roth's Hostel, in which hormonal Westerners are butchered abroad for their unethical behaviour, would be the single most influential film of the latter part of this decade? Goes to show that if you make a cheap film that brings in huge profits and critical kudos you instantly create a template for others to follow. Oliver Blackburn's Donkey Punch at least comes to the slightly different and entirely reasonable conclusion: Brits aboard are (quite literally) their own worst enemy.
So we have three girls from Leeds abroad on holiday hooking up with a British crew of likely lairy lads on a luxury yacht. Ecstasy and hardcore Russian drugs leads to orgiastic ecstasy and softcore sex, until things take a sudden swerve to the worse when the titular sex act leaves one of the participants in the fleshy fivesome experiencing the 'petit mort' a little too literally for everyone's comfort. It's then every lad and ladette for themselves as the bodycount piles up amidst recriminations, cover-ups and sheer lunatic bloody-mindedness.
Donkey Punch has been described as a kind of Dead Calm for the Ibiza set, benefitting from a decent soundtrack that includes Parallax View faves The Knife and Peter Bjorn and John. While there are numerous faults (banal, seemingly semi-improvised dialogue, wavering performance levels, all-over-the-place plot structure), some of these weaknesses actually help Donkey Punch overcome the main danger in making this type of movie: formulaic predictability. The result is a bloody mess from just about any perspective, but remains gripping, stylish entertainment, different from the norm but not so out-there that people won't get it, and seems destined for cult status when it finds its natural home on DVD.
Labels: bare essentials, don't try this at home, film reviews, tourist travails
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