Have you even found that single point in your horror fandom where you just go 'I'm not for this anymore'? okay some context for you. I have always loved extreme, some of my favourite authors are extreme writers, I always tell people on Bloody Good Reads that Jack Ketchum is one of my favourite authors of all time, with The Girl Next Door being my number one bloody good read. Some of the best films I have seen have also been within this too, Eden Lake, F, Human Centipede, all films that drag you through the ringer, but I am not sure if it is me getting older or that fact that I am a parent that made a certain point of SPEAK NO EVIL or Too Much Politeness: The Movie just made me look away and skip. We will get to that in a little bit.
SPEAK NO EVIL follows a young family of Björn, Louise and their daughter Agnes who are invited to spend the weekend with a family they met on holiday. Louise is unsure but Björn seems to be loving the company of Patrick, Karin and their son Abel. However things start to unravell and the couple are manipulated in doing pretty much what ever Patrick and his wife seem to want them to do. Even when they have the chance to escape during the night the couple are talked into staying for one final night. But it is this one fateful day that ends every thing for the young family.
Patrick and Karin are serial killers, targeting families on holiday and luring them into their home and taking their children to replace with children previously kidnapped. The twisted aspect of this film, and as promised the reason I found this too much is that they remove the tongue of the children, obviously so they can not tell anyone about the killers and their actions. The scene in question is extremely graphic, as Agnes is dragged from the car and her tongue is very visibly cut from her mouth. I could watch this one, and that shocked me as a whole as, lets be honest here I have seen MUCH worse, but I think as a parent this hit a part of my brain which tells me I just can't handle this kind of treatment of a kid.
As a whole, and with my critic hat on, the film doesn't have much else going for it apart from this scene. I went in tense already, with all the reviews of how brutal and bleak it is and I was expecting Eden Lake levels of bleak. Remove the brutality of the tongue scene however what we have is things we have seen before, a family in danger, and family who will not be getting out alive. I wanted to have Bjorn or Louise pop back up somehow living through the stoning and getting some kind of revenge but there was no slight relief of that.
Removing that one scene Eden Lake is worse so if you can handle the bleakness of that film you are going to be fine here. It has moments of tenseness but I do wonder if this is because I was already there.
For me personally I think I'm done with this side of horror for a long while. but it does have its merits and this scene will be what makes the film a one to watch for the more hardy members of the horror community. I might watch The Sadness the cleanse my pallet.
SPEAK NO EVIL follows a young family of Björn, Louise and their daughter Agnes who are invited to spend the weekend with a family they met on holiday. Louise is unsure but Björn seems to be loving the company of Patrick, Karin and their son Abel. However things start to unravell and the couple are manipulated in doing pretty much what ever Patrick and his wife seem to want them to do. Even when they have the chance to escape during the night the couple are talked into staying for one final night. But it is this one fateful day that ends every thing for the young family.
Patrick and Karin are serial killers, targeting families on holiday and luring them into their home and taking their children to replace with children previously kidnapped. The twisted aspect of this film, and as promised the reason I found this too much is that they remove the tongue of the children, obviously so they can not tell anyone about the killers and their actions. The scene in question is extremely graphic, as Agnes is dragged from the car and her tongue is very visibly cut from her mouth. I could watch this one, and that shocked me as a whole as, lets be honest here I have seen MUCH worse, but I think as a parent this hit a part of my brain which tells me I just can't handle this kind of treatment of a kid.
As a whole, and with my critic hat on, the film doesn't have much else going for it apart from this scene. I went in tense already, with all the reviews of how brutal and bleak it is and I was expecting Eden Lake levels of bleak. Remove the brutality of the tongue scene however what we have is things we have seen before, a family in danger, and family who will not be getting out alive. I wanted to have Bjorn or Louise pop back up somehow living through the stoning and getting some kind of revenge but there was no slight relief of that.
Removing that one scene Eden Lake is worse so if you can handle the bleakness of that film you are going to be fine here. It has moments of tenseness but I do wonder if this is because I was already there.
For me personally I think I'm done with this side of horror for a long while. but it does have its merits and this scene will be what makes the film a one to watch for the more hardy members of the horror community. I might watch The Sadness the cleanse my pallet.