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thranjax
Reviews
Vile (2011)
Dismal rather than vile.
Notwithstanding the impressive later career of its director, Vile is a shoddily written Saw rip-off which sacrifices any kind of believable scenario to get to the gimmick. Ten people (of course it is ten) kidnapped and held in a torture chamber/house where they have to inflict pain in order to generate enough chemicals - dopamine, etc. To fill vials attached to their heads. There are several serious issues with the plot.
Early on one of the characters says - correctly - that they could probably achieve much the same result by having sex or pleasuring themselves instead of torturing each other, but this is of course ignored immediately as a suggestion, because ... no, no idea why.
The "Why" of the whole set up is never addressed. Why don't the kidnappers just torture them themselves? What is the purpose of this set-up? We never see the people responsible, apart from the mole in their midst and a talking head on a video. If they are turned on by watching it they'll be disappointed because this "Vile" film is really quite tame, not showing much gore at all.
Oh, yes, the mole. That is a whole cartload of WHY? For what reason are they there? At the end, the mole reveals that they have done the same thing with several other groups - so why do they not have ANY injuries or wounds apart from the ones they get in this session?
Having said all that, this is far from the worst film of its type, but it won't satisfy gore hounds, or people who like a good thriller, or suspense film fans. It would be a cracking team game on Taskmaster, of course.
Devil's Island (2021)
Good intentions but many issues with realisation.
SPOILERS.
The problem with this film isn't the plot, as such, that is pretty straightforward. Samantha's grandparents are murdered: it would seem they were murdered by a satanic cult, which they may or may not have been part of. The cult try to scare Samantha off. One tries to warn her and is killed by the others, another called Michael ends up trying to attack Samantha and she shoots him. The "Sheriff" - almost certainly the final cult member - reveals that Michael was obsessed with her (probably true). Later, as Samantha seems to fit into the community, someone else comes to the island uninvited and she shoots them (we don't see who, but given there is only the Sheriff left as a character or cult member, it is presumably him).
What the film has going for it is Elle Alexander, who is very good in her performance. She is also - not that this matters - very attractive in a refreshing not-a-typical-blonde-stick-insect way. If Michael doesn't need his shrine anymore can I have it? Amazingly she seems to be in very few productions, someone take note.
But... Samantha does not seem to be investigating the murders. She comes from Vegas and is a cheerful person at first, dancing around, confident in herself: WHY has she moved to this island to live on her own? There needs to be a character driven reason for that, but nothing is provided. She has no dark past, no issue with the murders, not even curiosity about them. She makes one vague phone call to her dad to invite him over, but otherwise seems to have no friends or past despite being clearly an attractive, pleasant, fun-loving person. This makes no sense. The cult makes no sense: why do they need that particular island? What was the relationship with the grandparents? Why are ALL the local community so angry with her all the time (until the very end)? How can all these murders happen without anyone caring or noticing? Why can't that intensely irritating mute woman write more than one or two words at a time in huge writing or write in full explanatory sentences? How can such a short film seem so LONG and boring?
The poster and promotion are somewhat misleading as well.
There is an intention to provide a suspenseful, creepy thriller here, but the desire to obfuscate what is going on kills the whole thing stone dead, and the character motivations make no sense whatsoever.