LOU SIMON’S 3 (a.k.a. 3: An Eye For An Eye) * U.S.A. 2017 Dir: Lou Simon 82 mins
Give indie writer-producer-director Lou Simon credit for not only being an all-too rare female filmmaker in the genre, but also for making her fifth feature in five years, following the likes of HAZ MAT and AGORAPHOBIA. Sadly, 3 is a twist-laden torture movie at least 10 years too late to be relevant and too poorly written to be anything other than an unintentional comedy. The one-location, three-character set-up is heavily derivative of much earlier films, from the rubbish (THE TORTURED) to the smart (DEATH AND THE MAIDEN) and the outstanding (BIG BAD WOLVES).
Here, Todd Bruno and Aniela McGuiness are the anonymously named “He” and “She”, a couple who have abducted “It”, (Mike Stanley), the suspect not convicted of She’s alleged rape due to a lack of evidence. He’s intention is to torture “It” until he confesses. Waterboarding, mallet-bashing and foot-severing follows, conveyed in sequences that are intended to be intense but immediately weakened by cheap gore shots and a ludicrously over-emphatic music score. The film mostly dies, however, courtesy of a truly awful script in which no one acts or talks like citizens of Planet Earth. This means an endless series of terrible lines, of which “I learned a few things in Iraq…” and “His breath smelt like Eucalyptus” are just the tip of the iceberg. The shock twist, meanwhile, is heavily telegraphed and, like everything before it, is borrowed from earlier, better movies.
Review by Steven West