Terrorise

Terrorise is an honestly kinda fascinating grotty little slice of pre-Brexit nihilism, wherein depraved criminals and scummy, bastardly cops participate in a battle to see who'll come out looking the worst by the end of the film. It's nicely-shot, conceptually interesting, and is a rather unusual little regional Brit entry in the mid-2000s torture-porn canon, revitalised nicely for a modern audience. The original version, Tortured, was sold with comparisons to I Spit On Your Grave, though I would argue this is closer to a grimy microbudget UK version of The Last House on the Left.

Unfortunately, though I can absolutely see all the love put into Terrorise, it ended up doing very little for me as a film; the screening experience was fun, but that was more down to the atmosphere in the room than the film itself. Part of me wishes it leaned further into its exploitation film roots and lived up more to the grindhouse sensationalism of its previous titles, which included Psychopaths and Sex Slave, as there are large portions of Terrorise in which very little happens. The film largely peaks with its opening sequences of a railroad cat-and-mouse chase and our female lead's revenge upon her captor, I fear.

I wish said Amber Lee was given more agency in the comeuppance of her abusers at the end, as she mostly disappears once the cops show up. She's present for a large quantity of the movie, and meant to be the character we sympathise with the most, so I'm kind of disappointed that she didn't get control over taking down the men that captured and assaulted her. I'm also more than slightly surprised that she didn't recognise the two recently-escaped men that had attacked her years prior, two men who she was shown to have significant trauma regarding at the beginning of the picture. Something that should be watched at least once.