The Seasoning House

England's answer to Greg Nicotero moves away from the special make up effects and goes behind the camera to bring us this harrowing tale of Angel (Day, in a breath-taking debut), a girl ripped from her home during the war in the Balkans.

In war torn zones, military are kidnapping girls and selling them into the sex trade where they are sold to militia and civilians. Deaf and mute Angel is one of these girls who sees her mother murdered in front of her before being delivered to a brothel where she becomes the personal sex slave to its owner. A birthmark on her face makes her tainted goods so the owner, Viktor (Howarth), uses her to dope the girls with heroin to make them more amenable to their visitors, then clean them up afterwards. She spends her time away from the prying eyes of her captors crawling through the limited space of the ventilation system. Until an unplanned incident brings her head to head with the men who took her from her family.

Make no odds, The Seasoning House is not a comfortable watch but it is impossible to take your eyes from it. Based on true events of atrocities that happened during the war, Hyett brings us into a degenerate world of men willing to pay for sex with tied up, drugged women and pay extra to be rough with them. Some of the girls do not survive some of their "customers". The performances, especially from Day (watch out for her, she will be a name to take notice of) had to be good to make the film believable and to care about Angel. Howarth gives us a dark turn of a man just as at ease plunging a knife into the neck of a young girl to simply make a point as he is pouring a shot of whiskey.

Hyett builds a relationship between Angel and Viktor that enables the power dynamic between the two of them to change during the film. This is integral to some of the major turns in the story and needed to be handled delicately so as not to be too in your face about it but also sustain a sense of believability with the interaction of the two.

The Seasoning House is violent and gripping but never feels exploitative which was needed to ensure you retained a high level of empathy for Angel. It's hard to use the word enjoyed with this film but it is a superb piece of art that fully deserves wider recognition. If you get the chance and can stomach something more hard hitting than your usual Hollywood attempts and horror then I highly recommend this film.

A tragic tale of love, loss and death, this is one film you won't forget in a hurry.

With the Balkans war as setting this film begins very strong, mostly on the emotional side. In fact the initial scenes describing the terror of war crimes against unprotected and desperate people (mostly women and children) are brutal and tough (but very well done!). However, it's just the context to what is in fact a revenge film and a cat-mouse game. And if here the sides seem to be very disparate (strong military men against one single mute girl…) you know you should never despise your adversary and his weapons for little and inoffensive they might seem… It's a nice film that shows us the cruelty and sadism of wartimes! I score it 7/10.

The Seasoning House of the title is a Balkans Brothel, it's 1996 and young girls are being kidnapped during military attacks and sold to the owner of the Seasoning House. One such girl is Angel, a death and mute sufferer who the house owner takes a shine to and uses her as his assistant. When Angel strikes up a friendship with one of the girls, it is the catalyst for violence unbound.

A thoroughly bleak and distressing viewing experience, but in turn it's also bold and brilliant film making. Debut director Paul Hyett paints a grim portrait of an all too real problem in certain parts of the world, but thankfully he never once lets the material slip into exploitation territory.

The brothel is unsurprisingly an utterly desperate place, rife with squalor and abject misery. The windows are boarded up with crooked pieces of wood, the beds are filthy, the walls stained with years of dirty grime and the after effects of vile human actions. The girls are battered and bruised, chained to the beds and injected with drugs to make them compliant towards anything the human monsters so wish to do to them.

For practically 70 minutes we the viewers are holed up in this awful place along with the girls. Daylight is only briefly glimpsed through the window shards, we can smell the fear along with the dankness, and claustrophobia is rife. Angel (a brilliant Rosie Day) is our conduit as Hyett builds relationships between her and the two other main characters. Viktor (Kevin Howarth) the ruler of this vile kingdom, and inmate Vanya (Dominique Provost-Chalkley), the latter of which is deeply touching and superbly crafted by those involved.

Film then switches in tone after some truly awful scenes have paved the way for what transpires in the final third of the story. This switch to more conventional horror cinema has proved divisive, but the way Angel moves about the house, how she finds fortitude, is fascinating, and she has well and truly earned our utmost support as she seeks to erase some dastardly evil wrongs from history (headed by a suitably scary Sean Pertwee). This is not a cheap rape revenger movie, it's a survivalist horror, and some of the horrors inherent in The Seasoning House are tough to stomach, but necessary to balance the art and the reality. Stunning. 9/10

This film was brutal, graphic, emotional, and shocking in parts. The story was well written, and well acted. Sean Pertwee plays the part of a mean and horrible army officer, and I found myself hating him so much - I put that down to how well he played the part. The main character ("Angel" played by Rosie Day) was also played perfectly, as she doesn't speak a word in the whole movie, so the role relies on her acting ability, which she does so well. Some parts of this film are brutal and gory, but that makes this movie even better as it shows the emotion of the story line, which in my opinion is portrayed perfectly in these scenes. The first 15 minutes of the film set up the plot - and it is pretty confronting. I felt emotions that I haven't felt for a while from watching a film, and with every new scene I was heavily involved and interested to see how it turned out. I have to say this film is one of the best drama/horror movies I've seen in years. I would have to give it a solid 8.5 out of 10. Highly recommend it, just do not have children in the room when watching it.

A powerful kick in the guts.

The first frame of the film reads '1996 - Balkans'. By that time the 'Dayton Agreement' had been signed, yet Slobodan Milosevic, the president of Socialist Republic of Serbia (Serbia, current) and Ratko Mladic (commander-in-chief of the Army of Republika Srpska) continued the ethnic cleansing by setting up 'sex camps' for the Serbian Army where twenty to fifty thousands of Bosniak (Bosnian Muslims) women were systematically raped to intimidate, humiliate and produce a generation of Serbs, all with a political agenda.

"The women knew the rapes would begin when 'Marš na Drinu' was played over the loudspeaker of the main mosque. 'Marš na Drinu,' or 'March on the Drina', is reportedly a former Chetnik fighting song that was banned during the Tito years.

"While 'Marš na Drinu' was playing, the women were ordered to strip and soldiers entered the homes taking the ones they wanted. The age of women taken ranged from 12 to 60. Frequently the soldiers would seek out mother and daughter combinations. Many of the women were severely beaten during the rapes." - Seventh Report on War Crimes in the Former Yugoslavia: Part II, US submission of information to the United Nations Security Council.

This is a story of one such sex camp.

What I learned from Sarajevo was to stop complaining about anything.

What I took from the film is that it takes one tough cookie to absorb it all in and then explode with a vengeance in the enemy's face.