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| Images courtesy of MVD Marquee Collection |
Before becoming synonymous with the contemporary hard-boiled
American western with his screenplays for Sicario and Hell or High Water,
directing Wind River and Those Who Wish Me Dead and having created
the hit television series Yellowstone, writer-director Taylor Sheridan
first appeared on the silver screen with the least likely subgenre you’d expect
from cinema’s current cowboy: torture porn horror. In his 2011 debut feature film Vile
penned by fellow Yellowstone writer and actor Eric Jay Beck who also
plays one of the film’s main characters, the low-budget chamber piece and physical
endurance test arrives on the heels of such kindred fare as Saw, Hostel
and Martyrs though the film never becomes nearly as disturbing or
transgressive. Mostly it is a vehicle
for Eric Jay Beck who also served as co-producer on the project and while Mr.
Sheridan had a lot of learning ahead of him, it’s a mostly passable torture-oriented
ensemble shocker.
A group of ten random strangers awaken in a locked room (Saw
anyone?) before a video of an elderly woman informs them the path to
freedom lies in these mechanized collars attached to their necks ala The
Running Man or Battle Royale.
Any attempt to remove the collar will result in poisonous injection
followed by death. The catch is not
completely unlike Martyrs where the ability to endure excruciating
physical pain will determine who gets to go free and who will die under a 22
hour window. Moreover there’s a meter measuring
the pain percentage on the captives, needing to reach the 100% point to
escape. From here the film becomes a
torture manual not quite as gruesome as Martin Scorsese’s Silence but it
does have its share of mean spiritedness.
Legs are broken, teeth are pulled, fingernails are ripped off, throats
are crushed and people stick their arms in pots of boiling water. All the while, double crossings and mercurial
preexisting alliances between the captives start presenting themselves and soon
the ordeal literally becomes a survival of the fittest battle to the death.
Microbudget with hastily filmed handheld digital photography
by Stewart Yost and subtly rough electronic sonic abrasions by Anna Granucci,
the one-set chamber piece Vile won’t wow Taylor Sheridan completists or disciples
of Eli Roth for that matter but as a boilerplate gut-crunching programmer it
mostly serves up the grisly thrills week enough. Aided by a mostly good ensemble cast
including April Matson, Akeem Smith, Greg Cipes and producer-writer Eric Beck who
looks an awful lot like Leo Fitzpatrick, Taylor Sheridan’s first time effort feels
very much like a product of its day when harder unrated horror films were
flooding Blockbuster Video store shelves.
Though ostensibly in the torture porn horror subgenre, Sheridan fans if
they look hard enough will spot tropes that invariably appear in his later more
accomplished western works. The cast is
mostly fine though Sheridan’s affiliation with the project will be the primary
reason fans seek this one out.
As always, the MVD Marquee Collection does a good job with
their releases, including a slipcover, reversible artwork and deleted scenes in
the extras. While I won’t say for you to
buy this film with confidence, for Sheridan completists it represents an
interesting one-off in the director’s career working in a subgenre he’d never
touch again. Those looking for scares,
shocks or endurances aren’t going to get a whole lot of icky juicy
transgressions like the slipcover and trailers promise, but for those keen on
one of mainstream cinema and television’s most dedicated purveyors of the
American western Vile good or bad does present an interesting starting
point. You can only go up from here.
--Andrew Kotwicki
