An awesome and ridiculous film that leaves you thrilled beyond the point of your natural endurance
2012
Theatre
The show has suddenly become quite wonderful, and the galvanising factor is the terrific stage debut of Melanie C
Blood Brothers
Music
The British pop music industry may be eating itself but if Muse are the pick of what it can offer the world in 2010 then British music is in rude health indeed
Muse
I was smitten by both Gilberts enormous luxuriant moustache and the intelligence and nuance of this highly entertaining play
I totally recommend Babbo to anyone who is looking for really good and traditional Italian food
Always been a fan but never seen them live. I was ecstatic to be part of this epic event. WOW!
London,
Nick Curtis's rating
Reader rating
The makers of Donkey Punch were asking for it, really. A thriller in which a young woman is fatally punched in the back of the neck during a drug-fuelled orgy, eerily reminiscent of the murder of student Meredith Kercher after an alleged rough sex game, was always going to attract controversy.
Howls of outrage have duly greeted the efficiently nasty debut film by cowriter and director Olly Blackburn. The question is, does a low-budget British film warrant such opprobium? The answer is, up to a point.
Donkey Punch is arguably more misanthropic than misogynist. The four posh boys crewing a yacht off Majorca are shown to be far more vicious and amoral than the three northern girls they lure on board. Indeed, it's quite a useful corrective to have clean-cut toffs rather than working-class youths as the villains in a contemporary British film.
True, the group sex scene makes discomfiting viewing, and, true to the conventions of horror thrillers, the girls do seem to be punished for their sluttiness. But the very unpleasantness makes it effective. The characters embody a nasty but familiar strand in modern British society: not promiscuity or pharmaceutical excess, but the calamities wrought by bullying peer pressure. The claustrophobic yacht setting adds to the sense of tension as the characters egg each other on, and things spiral out of control.
If the film somewhat resembles that other boats'n'sex thriller Dead Calm, Blackburn at least devises gruesomely novel ways to wreak bloody mayhem on board. There's a neat visual touch too as fun in the sun slides, literally and metaphorically, into darkness.
Blackburn's boys and girls aren't likeable, but they are brought to vibrant, three-dimensional life by the young and attractive cast, in particular Tom Burke as the lazily sinister Bluey, Jaime Winstone as the flinty Kim, and newcomer Sian Breckin. The film is tautly plotted and helmed, sets out to shock and succeeds. It must be accounted a triumph of sorts, then, even if it leaves a nasty taste in the mouth.
Details are correct at the time of publication - please check with venue before booking.
Morning:
11°c
