"Violation" an uncompromising, artfully shot anti-revenge psychodrama

 

Violation (2021)

“Violation” could be considered the even-more-vicious sister to “Promising Young Woman.” Both films are rape-revenge stories, and yet neither one is a pulpy, perversely satisfying celebration of female-fronted vengeance and neither one is more complicated or more cathartic than the other. Whereas Emerald Fennell’s stylishly sobering, wickedly funny feature debut grazed the horror genre, Dusty Mancinelli and Madeleine Sims-Fewer’s provocative feature debut burrows right into portentous horror with overt symbolism and almost-casual extremities. Let’s call it Lars von Trier’s “I Spit on Your Grave.” While that will be a hard sell, especially for the faint of heart, "Violation" is more subdued but still furious as a disturbing meditation on the cause and effects of an all-consuming, life-changing trauma. It's like a scream underwater that nevertheless causes a powerfully damaging ripple.

A wolf chewing on a dead rabbit is probably the most fitting predator-and-prey image to open the film. From there, tension is already in the air between Miriam (Sims-Fewer) and husband Caleb (Obi Abili) before they make it to their weekend getaway. There, in a cabin in the woods, they catch up with Miriam’s estranged sister, Greta (Anna Maguire), and Greta’s charming American husband, Dylan (Jesse LaVercombe). After the sisters play board games on the back patio and both couples have chicken fights in the lake, it’s time to camp out by the fire. Once Miriam and Dylan are the last ones awake, they get to talking and accidentally share a kiss, but it’s just from the booze, of course. By morning when Miriam is still unconscious, a non-consensual encounter crosses the line, and that changes everything. Read the rest of the review here at Scare Magazine.

DM Films is releasing “Violation” (107 min.) to Shudder on March 25, 2021.

Grade: B