Saw this at the Brussel International Fantastic Film Festival 2019 (BIFFF for intimates). The director appeared before the screening for an introductory address. He told us that the script was originally written more than 10 years ago. It was at the time of SAW and the like, think "torture porn" as the main keyword. That version has been rewritten in the meantime to better adapt to changes in audience appreciation. The director considered this a logical consequence of the post-#MeToo era we live in nowadays.
The movie is well made and important steps in the proceedings are clearly shown, letting us live and feel along with the main protagonists. The "daddy" role is clear, given his history in Irak. But his daughter Zoë seems continuously in limbo. On one hand, she is very cooperative in bed with her father, as well as helping him to catch new girls. Both tasks are not natural for a daughter to do. On the other hand, she works against him by putting an end to the misery of one girl, though unclear why she helped specifically this one and not of her predecessors who similarly ended miserably. At another moment, she even attempted to put an end to it all.
Regardless of her motives to escape her current way of living, we get gradually the impression that Zoë has inherited some of the sadistic DNA of her father. We see her incidentally watch the tortures through an opening in the door (yet she usually stops looking very soon). This suspicion grows on us and is confirmed in the final scene, where she makes a totally different appearance (no details, no spoilers).
The implied message (morale is not the right word) of this movie is that not only men are sadists, seeking a form to consistently dominate women. Women have this "capability" too, though it can manifest in subtly different forms. The world is not so black and white as we are inclined to think. Given that the main protagonists are unsual in their purposes and their cooperation, one can derive several meanings from this movie. Superficially, we see a man chasing women and know (not see) him ending their lives in a dreadful way. But it is not a late SAW sequel. It brings hidden layers that still make it an interesting watch, and it bends several genre rules too. I wonder whether these not so obvious elements are intentional, or that I construe something out of nothing.
