When a film opens by mercilessly depicting a penis being gruesomely castrated with a pair of scissors, you know that, if nothing else, you're in for something interesting. And Wound is just that, unrelenting for its entire 77 minute runtime.
A mere five minutes following the genital mutilation, a nude, submissive housewife is tortured by her "master" in front of a camera. The nightmarish imagery does not end there. Other eccentric scenes include an animalistic rape by a man in a pig mask, incestuous teat suckling and a nasty birthing scene featuring a deformed, blood-spewing vagina.
As a result of the questionable content, Wound stirred up a bit of controversy in its home country of New Zealand. While people unfamiliar with the genre might make a fuss about it, the graphic content doesn't hold a candle to the likes of A Serbian Film or even The Human Centipede. Nothing but overblown claims to drum up press.
Between the bizarre sequences lies the perplexing story of a mother uniting with her daughter. The plot is not easy to follow, but there are two sides to the story. On one hand, an orphan, Tanya (Te Kaea Beri), searches for the mother that she has never met. Meanwhile, the mother, Susan (Kate O'Rourke), believes that her unborn daughter is taking over her life.
Susan struggles with metal illness, which accounts for the film's nonlinear structure. Acclaimed filmmaker Ken Russell (The Who's Tommy) hailed the movie as a "masterpiece." While I wouldn't go that far, Wound does share the unsettling, dreamlike atmosphere with Russell's Altered States.
Writer/director David Blyth has been in the industry for some 35 years, but Wound feels more like an independent filmmaker's early attempt at experimentation with controversial issues. Blyth, whose most notable effort is helming a handful of Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers episodes, recently took off the better part of a decade to focus on documentary work. Wound marks his return to features and, perhaps, a rebirth as a director as well.
