A drunken, crestfallen city worker, Graham (Richard Cotton) is wandering the streets of London’s Soho at night and comes across a neon-lit, seedy peepshow and tentatively enters. However, rather than watching a young woman gyrate in the booth, she tells him three tales that are a little too close to home.
The linking element of the stories is a site on the dark web called Black Rabbit, which allows people to make money by acting out the viewers’ fantasies. The first instalment, Personal Space, directed by Airell Anthony Hayles (They’re Outside), shows a terrifying home invasion and its disturbing outcome. Ibiza Undead’s Andy Edwards provides the middle story, Fuck Marry Kill, which takes the Saw approach with three men – two of which have been sleeping with the same girl, one a random stranger – tied up and ready to be tortured if they don’t ‘play’ the game. It’s down to Jake (Razor Blade Smile) West to lift the lid on the sad man’s life with The Black Rabbit, which recounts how his wife got involved with the seedy site and how Graham is to blame for his own situation.
Enveloped by the linking story (directed by Ludovica Musumeci), all three tales build up a gritty, sleazy atmosphere fitting for the Soho location, albeit leaning more to its heyday as the UK’s 42nd Street. Each story makes the viewer complicit in its nastiness. Like the websites alluded to in the movie, by watching we are both taking part and taking pleasure in what’s occurring. That’s not to say the filmmakers are moralising – far from it, this is exploitation pure and simple, but it still allows for a little food for thought when it comes to the more extreme elements of cinema.
Massive props must go to cinematographer Vince Knight (Wolf Manor), who brings out the dinginess of Soho and transports it back to the vice-den days of the seventies. Anthologies have come a long way since Amicus ruled the format, and Midnight Peepshow is one of the most cohesive entries to the subgenre we’ve seen for quite a while.
MIDNIGHT PEEPSHOW is released on DVD in the US and digital worldwide on February 13th.
