INCLUSION IN FOR THE SAKE OF VICIOUS

Closing the Fantasia Film Festival and making this edition one that is unforgettable even though COVID-19 has locked down the world and has forced festivals to go virtual is Gabriel Carrer’s and Reese Eveneshen’s For The Sake of Vicious.  If fans were waiting for crazy, unpredictable, intense, blood splattering duels with loads of violence and gore that would make Paul Verhoeven happy and even Quentin Tarantino turn his head, it would be this film.  After Gabriel Carrer‘s The Demolisher, fans and cinephiles alike were expecting a lot of blood and in co-directing partnership with Reese Eveneshen, they both did not disappoint.  For The Sake of Vicious is a film that is not for everyone but will make you think twice why this film was made the way it is.

We are first introduced to Romina, played by Lora Burke, who is a single mother nurse who goes home on Halloween night expecting to spend some quality with her son.  She then figures out that her house has been invaded by two men who she knows.  Chris, played by Nick Smyth, is holding Alan hostage, played by Colin Paradine, who is Romina’s wealthy landlord, right in the kitchen of Romina’s house.  Chris is seeking vigilante type justice because he believes that Alan had raped his daughter some time ago.  Alan refuses to confess that he had done this inhuman act on his daughter so Chris puts more violent force upon Alan to admit but Romina tries her best to keep him alive.  Little do they all know that a bunch of intruders is ready to harp on their little party.

This leads us to the next half of the film where many of the Fantasia fans have long been waiting for where a battle royale is held amongst Chris, Nick and Alan against the intruders.  The bloodbath makes stains on the whole house as we see much of the aggressive quarrels move from that tiny kitchen where all the excitement started.  Everyone is being thrown around, picking up the nearest weapon that is available in their sight and trying to kill their counterparts with a lot of satisfying screaming and yelling.  Carrer and Eveneshen do not ease up on the gas on the film as more people come through and more blood is shed.  Amongst all the action and violence, the audience then figures out why this all has taken place on the night of Halloween.

Lora Burke as Romina

With all the talk of inclusion in this difficult year, For The Sake of Vicious could have not come at a better time.  While many were looking for the gore and violence in the film, we here on FERNTV noticed something that separates this film from the rest.  It’s been done time and time again in this home invasion sub-genre that the invaders usually do their dirty work on elite people living in a mansion or some elegant massive cottage away from the city.  Not to shoot down Adam Wingard’s You’re Next, or Mike Flanagan’s Hush or Joel Schumacher’s Trespass but it is usually the rich are the ones being intruded or invaded.  So why not make a film where the audience can maybe relate to and make the choice of who to side with.  Most of us don’t have massive mansions where we can have a long table dinner with our family let alone having all of them show up in their busy schedules waiting to be killed by masked men.

Carrer and Eveneshen make the film realistic, intense and claustrophobic because it all happens in a small house where space is limited and what everyone in this film is striving for.  Everything happens in real-time and not as sophisticated as what some of the intruders do to their targets in the films mentioned beforehand.  This is as raw as you can get and there is no time and no room for playing hide and seek in For The Sake of Vicious.  This is what happens when you take revenge on someone and this is what happens when a hit needs to be made by those who have street-level cred.  Put these two instances together and you get an explosion of chaos where there is no chance of turning back.  The film gets in your face to be vicious and we’re quite content with that.