Film Review: Wound (2010)

SYNOPSIS:

Susan isn’t the most stable person in the world, which is understandable considering some of the experiences she has gone through during her lifetime. As a matter of fact, she is slowly but surely losing her mind and becoming more and more detached from reality with each passing moment. Her mental state goes from bad to worse when her long lost daughter Tanya (who has quite a few issues of her own) comes looking for her. Soon the bodies start piling up and it isn’t clear who is responsible for the murders. Is Susan the person going around killing those around her? Is Tanya the actual culprit? Does Tanya actually exist or is she just a figment of Susan’s demented mind?

REVIEW:

If you look up this movie online you will see that it caused quite the controversy in its home country of New Zealand. It was supposedly almost banned there, and many film reviewers were disgusted and disturbed by it due to the gore, scenes of sexual deviance, incest, and just random weirdness in general (which includes a woman wrapping her poop in aluminum foil and keeping it in a freezer for some unknown reason).

Maybe I am just very, very desensitized or some people are just way too sensitive for their own good, but after watching it I don’t see what the big deal is all about. Yes, there are some weird things going on here and there is some pretty cool gore, but to be honest I have seen movies that were a lot more out there and disturbing. As a matter of fact, if I had to take a guess I would say that the filmmakers may have tried a little too hard to make it so disturbing. It didn’t scare me, make me sick, or freak me out at all, and while I was expecting it to be one of the most hard core brutal and disturbing movies of the last couple of years I couldn’t help but feel a little underwhelmed by it.

Directed by David Blyth, (who has directed several episodes of “ The Mighty Morphin Power Rangers,” which is weird and disturbing in itself) “Wound” is a weird little flick and I am not exactly sure that I got it. I struggled to follow what was going on and while things made sense for the most part, there were also too many moments where I was wondering to myself what the hell was going on. It is obvious that the people behind it are big David Lynch fans as the overall vibe of the movie reminded me of one of his films (which may or may not be a good thing according to your personal taste).

It is pretty much a fever dream of a movie and I think that many viewers will be turned off by how confusing it is at times. Hell, to be honest I don’t really see many people making it all the way to the end because they will be so unsure about what is happening that they will end up giving up and just taking it out of the DVD player before the end credits.

Don’t get me wrong, there are some things that really work for the movie. The cast is excellent, with Kate O’Rourke doing an awesome job as the strange and troubled Susan. The same can be said for Te Kaea Beri who plays the twisted and violent Tanya, who quickly became my favorite character. There is also some fun gore and some pretty decent death scenes, and a couple of parts that were just genuinely unsettling (the bit with Susan wearing the mask toward the beginning comes to mind).

I am not exactly sure what I thought about “Wound.” I liked it, but at the same time I didn’t like it. If you look up reviews for it you will see that some people absolutely loved it and thought that it was brilliant while others thought that it was total garbage. I don’t think that it was a masterpiece and I sure didn’t think that it was terrible, so I guess I am somewhere on the fence with it. I don’t want to tell you to run out and grab a copy, but at the same time I don’t want to tell you that you shouldn’t run out and see it.

I think that basically if you are into David Lynch-type movies that are out there and more than a little odd and confusing that you will love this movie. It you don’t like these kinds of movies then your best bet is to stay away. In the end, I’ll leave it all up to you as to if you want to check it out or not.

Wound (2010)