MINDLESS MUSINGS

The concept is sickening yet simple, and with the revelations coming out from the Epstein Files, nowhere near as farfetched as we would hope. A savvy entrepreneur has thought of another way for the mega rich to entertain themselves at the expense of the peasants. Hunting humans is so blasé and exhausting. Why not just have the pleb of your choice incapacitated in a room filled with all sorts of tools and surgical instruments, where you can torture them till your black fucking heart’s content.

Unwary tourists are lured away from the more popular European locations to a little town in Slovakia with the promise of all sorts of hedonistic pleasures. The town is basically owned by the clandestine corporation running this atrocious service; thus, our eager travellers are completely isolated and at the mercy of these sick fucks.

The torture scenes are brutally disturbing as expected, but when the horror subsides you are left with another, and in my case much worse, grisly sensation. This whole gruesome affair which is designed to gratify evil rich bastards would not be possible without the local minimum wage grunts doing the dirty work.

This is divide and conquer at its finest!

The local economy is crap, and this torture factory is possibly the best paying gig in town. If the money isn’t enough to thicken your skin, how about resentment? Fucking tourists coming over here treating us like toys. They think that because their currency is stronger than ours, they are better than us? Fuck them! We’ll square up and make some good money to boot. Who’s laughing now?

The honeytraps and spruikers get to feel the rush of lethally fooling these blow-ins and the security people get to feel the power of life and death over another human who may or may not have looked down on them; all while earning a good quid. I found much of that stuff just as gut churning as any of the torture porn.

The original film has one of the victims escape through a combination of luck, determination and quick thinking; the kind of stuff we want from a hero (or at least a survivor who turns the tables). While there is no glorious victory and he is sure as shit not going to bring this operation down, he at least gets away and manages to dish out a few savage paybacks along the way. With a film this dark, we’ll take that small victory and be satisfied.

Flash forward 2 years for the sequel and say goodbye to any sliver of hope you had for the common people. Like any self-respecting sequel, this one ups the gore and cruelty, but I am unsure if Roth deliberately upped the cynicism with this one: no justice for the peasants here.

To get the ball rolling, we open with our tenacious survivor from the original movie getting taken out and his severed head delivered to the boss of the torture club. No way a lowly pleb is getting away with what he did! On with the show then.

This time we have three female suckers (I mean art students). I won’t waste time with the plot, and we only need to focus on Beth for the purpose of this exercise. I’ll just say that if you enjoyed the original (you may need help) you will enjoy this one. Needless to say, they all end up being the target for some wicked rich prick’s twisted fantasy.

This time around Beth is our survivor/hero. She manages to get the upper hand on her tormentor (she literally has him by the balls!), but this time our champion does not make an audacious escape. She is trapped in the room with her now captive would be torturer.

Rather than a daring breakout we are presented with a short standoff. However, we don’t get to see the club’s policy on hostage taking (it’s hard to guess if they would simply kill a customer who was careless enough to end up in this position). Instead, Beth lets it be known that she is not short of a quid herself (or her family isn’t).

Her stooge makes a desperate attempt to outbid her, but the boss reveals that they know his buddy paid for him (ex-buddy if you know what I mean) and he cannot honour his bid. The deal is struck and Beth is all but out. There’s just one more thing…

I suppose here I should tell you why Mr Stooge’s generous mate is no more. You see, he lost his nerve and couldn’t do the deed. Now it’s entirely up to the client what goes on in the room: indulge in any grotesque abuse your vile imagination can muster or go straight to the coup de grace; but you must get your hands dirty; you must leave this place as a murderer. It helps keep everyone on an equal footing. Well, old matey tried to opt out of this stipulation, and he already knew way too much and so…dog food anyone?

Beth is presented with the same option, and her dunce-now-victim decides to hurl insults at her to help her with her decision, may he rest in peace. Beth struts out defiantly and we feel vicarious triumph. To add icing to the cake, Beth orchestrates a trap for the conniving bitch who lured them all there in the first place and gives her the good news.

Hooray! The good guys win!

And I thought the original left a bitter taste in the mouth.

You do realise that the only reason Beth got away was because she was richer than the other guy and she was willing to kill him and become a ‘full’ member of the club. A slight difference from the first film’s escapee. He couldn’t afford to buy his freedom, and, in the end, he didn’t get away at all. He literally lost his fucking head!

Yeah, both survivors killed assholes who were participants in this horrendous enterprise, but after all is said and done, besides the one or two torturers they nailed each, they only killed the working stiffs. That soulless fucken boss never even looked vexed! This whole Epsteinesque operation would probably carry on without a blip even if he was drawn and quartered anyway.

The audience is handed a few expendable scapegoats, and we cheer at their demise, while the whole macabre business carries on and the money keeps flooding in. There will be no shortage of replacement conmen, temptresses and grunts to continue feeding fun seeking tourists to this meat grinder, and there certainly will be plenty more depraved rich people wanting to partake of this vicious ceremonial status symbol.

Whether it was just his way of arranging a more permanent escape for Beth or was a deliberate depiction of the banality of evil it hit home hard.

“Like a dog lying in a corner

They will bite you and never warn you

Look out, they’ll tear your insides out

‘Cause everybody hates a tourist

Especially one who, who thinks it’s all such a laugh” (1995)