Vile

Two couples regret picking up a cougar hitchhiker after she knocks them out and they come to in the basement of a locked down house with some others. These others show them a video that explains that the only way out is through torturing one and other. The timer starts counting down and it's down to business.

Further testament to the (sometimes sad) fact that I'll watch just about anything on Instant Netflix, this film has a threadbare plot, even for a torture porn film. That would almost be excusable if it bought anything new to the table, it doesn't. The characters never seem real, the violence never reacher the caliber of Saw, much less Hostile. And before too long the whole thing grows very tedious.

A group of people are abducted and trapped in a house. No one knows why they're there, not even after watching a video by the person who set it all up. All it tells them is that in order to get out they must suffer pain.

Monitors have been surgically implanted in the backs of their heads that measure the chemicals released by their brains. This leads to drastic action and lots of bloody violence.

Admittedly, the setup sounds familiar. Movies like SAW come immediately to mind. However, the motive behind the torture is different, and this movie lacks SAW's nifty devices. As with many such films, the characters are mostly unlikeable, though the acting is above average.

The most unrealistic aspect of VILE is just how quickly these supposedly normal, everyday people adapt to being body mutilators! It's also surprising just how boring it all gets at times. Rather than being terrifying / disturbing, It's pretty tedious, and the implementation of the torment is pretty mundane: A hot iron, boiling water, a screwdriver, etc.

This is torture for torture's sake with a halfhearted "twist" at the end...

The concept and execution are good, so fans of torture-style movies will be partially satisfied.

Picking up a suspicious-looking stranger at a remote gas station in the middle of the night is not a smart move.

The plot is interesting and more characters means more blood and gore.

People torture and brutalize each other to survive. They even seem to enjoy it.

Instead of finding a way to get out of the house, they prefer to attack each other immediately. The acting is partly convincing. It moves a bit slowly and the overly long dramatic speeches in between drag the pace down. Except for the pregnant one, you don't care much about the others. It is obvious that one of them is involved.

I must say there are some disturbing scenes. The ending is not descriptive and not enough. It should have been better.

Vile is what indie horror should be. With that said, this is not an amazing movie, but it does the genre right. Indie horror should have an interesting premise, solid gore, passable acting and avoid obvious stupidity. And with the bar set low, Vile easily sails over the bar.

Shockingly, the movie starts with a group of teens getting kidnapped. However the twist is they then finding themselves in a locked house with another group of people who discover they must torture themselves to extract a drug from their brain before they can leave. Interesting premise – check.

The horror is both physical and psychological. Could you torture yourself via burning iron, finger nail pulling etc? What would you do? All good questions, and often the characters come to the same conclusions (eventually) as I may have. When the audience does see gore, it is very tactfully done, looking real, but not over blown. This is not a torture porn movie. Solid gore – check.

The actors are solid, characters are interesting enough, and create some marginally engaging dynamics. Characters have a good balance of screen time, and enough personality to create some realistic group tension. The directing is also solid, although some of the sub plots might have been expanded on more clearly. Acting – check.

The obvious stupidity is questionable. The premise is good, but as the cliché goes, there are enough plot holes to drive a truck through. These lead into an ending that predictably is a letdown. I could not think of an ending that would be much better. The movie just kind of locks itself in. This is common with indie horror, so I mostly gave it a pass. Enjoy the build up, not the pay off.

So there you have it, a solid indie horror movie with lots going for it, but some obvious pit falls that are hard to avoid. Sometimes as a director, to get characters into situations you want them in, you just have to hope an audience overlooks some obvious trucks.

As a rare reviewer on IMDb I only decided to comment on this after reading the rather negative posts from others. It ain't half bad - yes there are Saw/Hostel comparisons and it fits rather aptly into the "torture-porn" genre. It seems as though the production staff are fairly new to the game and I don't think they deserve the kind of criticism handed to them by the other (two, at the time of writing) reviews seen here.

Without giving anything away, it's a solid, tense first hour with questionable (but believable, considering the circumstances, and assuming you have an open mind) character development that would have benefited from a less ambitious attempt at a dramatic conclusion and something that's worth a watch for fans of the genre.