Defenceless

I knew from the DVD box that this was dialog-free, but when I saw the subtitle "A Blood Symphony" I thought, "Uh-oh. This is no Aria." And it wasn't.

The film consists of a typical rape/revenge plot set entirely to music. This is not a bad idea: with a suitable score, a brilliant choreographer, and lurid visuals, this could be quite effective. In Defenceless, though, the music is not at all choreographed to the events on-screen, and in fact rarely changes from the inane classical pieces. The acting is hammed-up and unnatural, and the violence is jaw-droppingly unconvincing. This last one is really a sore point for me in low-budget slasher films: have none of these directors seen Doom Generation? Katiebird? It doesn't take a big budget to produce convincing violence, but it does take talent.

As far as rape/revenge films go, the plot of this is fairly standard, though the events are presented in such as way as to make them unbelievable. A woman refuses to sign a contract with her three business partners (to get her land, according to the DVD box, though this is not conveyed in the film), apparently changing her mind at the last minute (I say this because a contract signing party is generally not the time to express your concerns about the deal). Her partners have her husband killed, and send her photos with a note saying "You should have signed the contract BITCH" (I'm not making this up).

Like any rational person provided with direct evidence of a murder, she tries to kill herself. Some random woman nurses her back to life, falls in love with her, gets raped and killed by the business partners who send a video of this to the main character. Again she tries to kill herself. She takes her son to the beach, is raped and murdered by her business partners who apparently throw her body into the sea (evidently this was too difficult to film).

Nine months later she washes ashore, a cannibal corpse that sleeps in a tidal pool and is bent on revenge. Sort of. After a housewife shows her the articles about the death of her and her family at the hands of her business partners who, in a really heavy-handed piece of exposition, were cleared of murder charges. She kills the three of them in ways that would be gruesome and unsettling if they were, in fact, gruesome and unsettling.

Looking at the IMDB comments for this, it seems that people are afraid to give a negative review in case they are accused of not understanding it, not being prepared for it, or not liking art-house cinema. Well, I understand it, I was prepared for it, and I do not shy away from art-house cinema, so I'll be the one to say it: this movie is BAD.

* * * R A T I N G * * *

Defenseless (IMDB)

Wince : [*****]
Flinch : [*____]
Retch : [*____]
Gape : [*____]

Beerequisite : [****_]
Pornability : [**___]
Obscurity : [***__]
Explicability : [**___]

What I would do different: This movie could probably have been saved with tight editing and a proper score.

Sub-genre concerns: Why is it that every murder/revenge movie (e.g. family killed by the Mob) has five minutes of background and 90 minutes of revenge, but every rape/revenge movie has 90 minutes of background and five minutes of revenge?