INCREDIBLE VIOLENCE / CERT: TBC / DIRECTOR: G. PATRICK CONDON / SCREENPLAY: G. PATRICK CONDON, ROSS MOORE / STARRING: M.J. KEHLER, STEPHEN OATES, MICHAEL WORTHMAN, KIMBERLEY DRAKE / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW
For fans of the genre, the simple, visceral pleasures of the no-nonsense slasher flick come guilt-free. For those who like their horror a little more cerebral, self-referential bloodfests that tip a knowing wink to their audience can be much more satisfying. Problems only tend to arise when a filmmaker attempts to bludgeon these two very different approaches to horror cinema together without regard to consistency. Incredible Violence suffers from exactly this affliction.
The film’s ‘Meta’ ambitions get things underway with great promise, as a film-within-a-film storyline is set in motion. Indie director Condon has frittered away a production budget given to him by some questionable funders who expect him to turn in a bloody horror flick. But Condon has yet to shoot a single frame. So he decides to rent a house in the woods, wire it with CCTV cameras, and recruit a small pool of actors willing to work for free. He plans that his characters can then die bloody snuff deaths at zero cost without the need for a film crew. As he becomes ever-more unhinged, Condon sets up a command centre in the loft and distributes pages of his improvised script by old-school computer printers set up in the bedrooms of his live-in cast.
It’s not a wholly original premise, but the concept of a ‘horror movie, but for real’ has not yet been completely mined out by English-language filmmakers. Throughout this rendition of that idea, there are moments that break the fourth wall, drawing attention to clichés of the genre and inviting the audience to question their voyeuristic relationship with the material unfolding on screen. At one point, a character wanders through the on-location production unit filming the film within a film. It all gets very Meta. Yet for many of its (intentionally) repetitive scenes, the film simply reruns the usual slash-and-stab routines of bargain basement grim-core, mixing in some strangulation and light torture along the way.
This means that it’s just not clear what the film is trying to say about ‘the nature of the horror movie’. The lack of any attempt to explore the implications of the depiction of women as victims of violence in screen horror will lead many viewers to conclude that this critique of the art of horror filmmaking is less insightful than these auteurs suggest.
Neither the writers nor the director aim for realism, but that doesn’t absolve them of the need to account for their characters’ motivations. There’s no explanation as to why the film within the film director has gone psycho, and his group of actors fail to exhibit a shred of self-protective common sense as their colleagues are dispatched. As the guileless newbie Grace, M. J. Kehler projects just the right sense of brittle confidence; and it’s only her character’s fate that the film seems to want you to care about.
Movies with Meta ambitions should intrigue, offer fresh perspectives and new insights into the genre by overturning expectations and subverting the usual filmic conventions. Incredible Violence attempts such a deconstruction, but ends up just hacking away at its subject matter with what turns out to be a particularly blunt blade.
