Torment 2008 Review

Torment 2008

Directed by: Steve Sessions

Starring: Suzi Lorraine, Tom Stedham, Ted Alderman

Review by Luisito Joaquín González

We have seen the word ‘Torment’ pop up a few times in obscure horror titles over the past thirty years. These include a film from 1985 that is often touted as a slasher, but is more of a serial killer flick and a British entry from 2009 that traipsed the ‘revenge of the bullied herd’ route. This quickie from director Steve Sessions is most definitely the truest stalk and slash flick of them all and it has also become something of a rarity

It was made for $5,000 over five-days in 2007 and was picked up for release the following year. Director Sessions already had a couple of horror movies under his belt and has become fairly popular amongst fans of micro-budget movies. He chose a clown as his antagonist and as I have said previously, motion pictures with killer clowns in them are rarely any good, so he had a real chance to make a statement with this, his sixth picture.

 

A young women is released from an institution by psychiatrists that believe she can adapt back to society as long as she’s taken care of. Her husband whisks her off to a remote house in the forest where the two of them can be alone and rekindle their romance. As soon as she arrives though, she sees an ominous stranger dressed as s clown from the window and attempts to convince her partner that they are unsafe.

I had promised actor and a SLASH abover Jade LaFont, who plays a small part in this picture, that I would review this film over a year ago. Unfortunately, I never got round to doing so until he reminded me on the site’s Facebook page a few weeks ago. I’m glad that he did, because Torment is an interesting addition to the genre and it is unlike any other that I’ve seen recently, which is meant both as a swipe and a compliment. It seems that the plan here was to roll out a stalk and slasher with a psychological slant and this novel approach is intriguing and unique. Session’s screenplay is all about delivering an atmosphere; and it mixes three styles from popular sub-genres. Whilst the murders are those that you’ll usually see in torture-porn films, the boogeyman is pure stalk and slash and they are both wrapped together in a synopsis that leans toward the Identity/The Ward style of thriller.

I browsed through some other reviews of the picture and found that they all mentioned one specific aspect. You see, Sessions includes early scenes that portray that Suzi, our heroine, is suffering delusional visions because of her illness/medicine. However instead of building the mystery around whether the killer is real or just a figment of her imagination, we are shown him committing external killings that prove that the threat is indeed genuine. Although those critics considered this to close the door on the most obvious slice of ‘is he or isn’t he’ tension, personally, I feel that it opened many others that manifested themselves as the story rolled on to its surreal conclusion. We are offered no backstory or motive for our psychopathic jester, which gives him a Myers-alike chilling aura that makes him all the more terrifying and adds to the ambiguity. We also get some impressive suspense scenarios in the later stages and one jump-scare that is truly outstanding. I especially enjoyed the use of specific sounds – or therefore a smart lack of – to make the deaths all the more authentic and the score is neatly composed.

Despite so much positivity, the film does have a number of flaws. Far too much time is spent within dialogue scenes between the husband and wife that are long-winded and fail to add anything to the plot. There’s a sequence inside a car in the first twenty-minutes that is so badly edited and conveyed that it almost becomes nonsensical and frustrating. Even more so when it’s obvious to viewers that this could have been filmed in a different location and would have worked much more efficiently. Another weak part is that three people are brutally tortured, but don’t let out so much as a loud whimper, let alone a blood curdling scream. I have learned that this is because the director was filming in a upstate neighbourhood and didn’t want to alert the authorities, but if I hadn’t had been told this, it would have left me highly critical of what looks like obvious ineptitude. In reality victims can at times be too scared or stunned by a state of shock to yell when pain is inflicted upon them. Film fans are used to hearing the cries of the prey in horror films though, and so they are unlikely to over analyse and excuse the lack of audible reaction seen herein.

Bluntly, Torment should not be as obscure as it has become. It is not a great film by any stretch of the imagination, but it tries hard to deliver something authentic and that in itself deserves praise. There are not many slasher movies that don’t have some of the elements that were implemented by Halloween, but you could count on one hand the amount that capture Michael Myers’ chilling aura of menace. Tyler Tharpe’s Freak from 1996 was a fine example of an enigmatic antagonist and now we have another. If a movie of this genre manages to build tension and keep you guessing, it’s doing something right.

Slasher Trappings:

Killer Guise: √√√

Gore √√

Final Girl √√√

RATING: