Smells like Something Really Nasty Just Happened

Director: Steven Kastrissios
Main Cast: Peter Marshall, Caroline Marohasy, Brad McMurray

The Horsemen is an insanely violent Australian revenge movie.  Essentially, it is torture-porn - with the porn set at 2 and the torture turned to 11.  As such, it is certainly an exhilarating bloodbath of a movie, but ultimately the plot makes Iron Man look like it has depth.

DVD Release Date: 1st March 2009

Shot in high contrast, desaturated, and heavily vignetted, the Horsemen looks throughout much like the UK government's Keep to Thirty adverts, complete with blood spattered bodies and twisted limbs.  There are few sets, and the hand-held camera is flung about in parts in a way that would make even Paul Greengrass feel green.

It starts well, half-way through the story so that the pace hits you like a crowbar - which is also promptly used to knock out the first person we are introduced to, before waking him - to burn him to death.  Do you love the smell of burning human flesh in the morning? G'day! yes I do.

The story is of a distraught father called Christian, brilliantly played by actor Peter Marshall, who has just discovered that his daughter has been killed at some point in the process of making a porn movie, or is it a snuff movie?  She has overdosed on heroin (hence horsemen) and her body has been dumped in an alleyway and left.  The only clue that he has to finding out what happened to her is the cheap porn movie that has mysteriously been sent to him in the post, which he watches, and which, predictably, leaves him a psychopathic wreck.

Christian sets about trying to track down the people involved, and he does so one by one, and each time he sits them down with his toolbox and 'persuades' them to tell him where their friends are.  Each time he gets a little more inventive.  Suffice to say that he starts simply, but learns quickly, and after 30 minutes has already advanced to fish-hooks (and reel) to the testes.  Though it sounds absurd, it isn't.  It is all thoroughly gripping (apologies) thanks to some superb acting and a talented director of photography.  In any case, what would you do with a football pump and a semi-naked porn-king, bound, gagged and somehow mixed-up in your beautiful teenage daughters murder?  Quite.

Of course after a while, though the violence increases, the plot does not go anywhere that you don't expect it to and it is hard not to start feel inured to it all.  However, as the side-story gets wound into the grisly finale, you are ultimately provided with an ending that brings the film full-circle, and though simple and relatively predictable, is satisfying.  This is a very dark, violent movie, that has more in common with its compatriot Wolfcreek than films like Hostel, but it is better for it. Great, if grisly, stuff.

Country of Origin: Australia
Running Time: 96 mins
Certificate: 18