Foreign Objects travels the world of international cinema each week to look for films worth visiting. So renew your passport and get your shots, because this week we’re heading to…
the UK!
Three stupid British girls vacationing in Spain hook up with four pricks and head out into the Mediterranean on a borrowed yacht. Want some E ladies? Sure! Wanna wrap your lips around my “hardcore” heroin pipe? OK! Want to go down to the cabin, spank our asses, screw on camera, get punched in the back of the head, and die? Hell yeah! Welcome to director/co-writer Oliver Blackburn’s Donkey Punch.
After Lisa’s “accidental” death, her friends find themselves outnumbered four to two and the battle of the sexes begins. Tammi recently had her heart broken, keeps her clothes on, and doesn’t have sex, while Kim is a feisty, little sexpot. The four guys are all assholes to varying degrees. Marcus is months away from becoming an officer in the Royal Navy and won’t let anything risk his future, Bluey is a cleft-lipped purveyor of drugs and sex stories, Josh is an inexperienced dick in law school, and Sean is Josh’s protective older brother.
The guys decide that the best course of action is to dump Lisa’s body at sea, and while the girls obviously disagree, there’s little they can do to stop them. What follows is a complete breakdown of trust between both strangers and friends. Who’s responsible? Who’s most likely to face charges? Who has the video camera? Who raised these self-centered mother fuckers anyway? Bodies pile up as everyone scrambles to cover their own asses, and while it’s obvious from the film’s first frame who the lone survivor will most likely be, the trip does manage one or two surprises along the way.
Donkey Punch looks beautiful both in casting and scenery. Blackburn has a sharp eye for impressive exterior visuals and handles the fast, tightly cramped action inside the boat with equal skill. The acting is solid throughout, and the film does manage a couple darkly comic laughs. The sex scene leading up to the donkey denouement is pretty damn good (although it’d be better with fewer naked dudes blocking the action). Deaths are mostly quick and brutal, and are delivered via a fine assortment of implements including rope, knives, outboard motors… And as hot as a bare naked and writhing Sian Breckin (Lisa) is, the best scene is actually a nasty little homage to Dead Calm by way of a flare gun.
Unfortunately sex and violence just aren’t enough to keep the movie afloat. None of the characters are particularly likable leaving the viewer with no one to root for or care about. Most of them act in predictable fashion too, some even going so far as to telegraph (if not blatantly state) their intentions to the other survivors. Let’s see… these guys just killed your friend and dumped her overboard, so why not tell them you’re going to turn them into the police when you reach shore? One character inexplicably chooses suicide over survival, and we’re meant to believe it’s all so tragically dramatic when it’s actually just dumb. Stupid acts like that just add to the frustration you’ll feel watching a good looking cast in a good looking film behave like moronic cockholsters.
Donkey Punch has a limited theatrical release starting this Friday, 1/23. Magnolia Home Entertainment will release the DVD on April 7th. Check out the red band trailer below.
Bottom Line: The cramped and claustrophobic isolation of Dead Calm combined with the paranoid and untrustworthy assholes from Shallow Grave results in a movie nowhere near as good as either of those classics. Director Blackburn has crafted a good looking film and manages solid performances from his small cast. There’s some fairly hot sex and some mildly brutal violence, but there’s also predictability and stupidity to spare. Oh, and no farm animals. (Which is a good thing.)
Related Topics: Foreign Objects, Horror
