Butcher Block is a weekly series celebrating horror’s most extreme films and the minds behind them. Dedicated to graphic gore and splatter, each week will explore the dark, the disturbed, and the depraved in horror, and the blood and guts involved. For the films that use special effects of gore as an art form, and the fans that revel in the carnage, this series is for you.
Jennifer Kent’s feature debut, The Babadook, is still discussed as one of horror’s most divisive recent releases, even if its eponymous boogeyman has gone on to become a bit of an icon. Her sophomore effort, The Nightingale, has continued that polarizing streak, as evidenced by news of angry walkouts from the film’s Sydney premiere just two months ago. Even when it’s been very well received, it comes with caveats that this film should come with serious trigger warnings. As our own Meredith put it in her review out of Sundance, the film is packed with harrowing, visceral violence that’s “so mind-breakingly brutal that viewers will want to look away.” It’s not the harrowing violence that’s likely the source of the divisiveness, though, but that Kent wields it as a weapon in a historical period thriller.
Set in 1825 Tasmania, Clare (Aisling Franciosi) is an Irish convict indentured to British officer Hawkins (Sam Claflin) to pay off her time. Hawkins has been stationed and tasked with colonizing the area, an order he’s long come to resent. Since Clare is happily married and with a baby, she hopes to convince Hawkins to write her the letter of recommendation he’d promised so that she could finally live as a free woman. But this isn’t a happy movie, and things go catastrophically awry, leading to a devastating chain of events that leaves Clare hellbent on revenge.
Within the first twenty minutes or so, Clare is raped twice; twice by Hawkins, and after the second instance he allows his right hand man Ruse (Mindhunter and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood’s Damon Herriman) to have a turn. It’s this second harrowing scene that provides the inciting event for Clare. The soldiers have invaded her home, and assaulted her while destroying everything she holds dear. It’s graphic and unrelenting, and likely the moment that some viewers decided they’d had enough. They leave her for dead, and when she comes to she hires an Aboriginal tracker, Billy (Baykali Ganambarr), to help her find those soldiers who have set off on a dangerous quest of their own.
Kent isn’t interested in telling the standard rape-revenge story with The Nightingale. Clare is driven by revenge, but this is more about the horrors of Australian colonization. The further into the perilous path Billy and Clare head, the more Kent peels back the layers of trauma. Kent does this by littering the protagonists’ trail with gruesome corpses, explicit violence, more rape, and bloodshed. There’s very little kindness to be found both in the wild or in the civilized world. It’s bleak, and it’s an endurance test at a runtime of a little over two hours.
Because Kent expands the perspective- the injustices of this world exceed far beyond Clare’s small colonized home- justice doesn’t quite play out the same way it does in typical rape-revenge films. If justice exists at all; it never feels like a sure bet here. But this road is paved with violence and pain, including some very cathartic brutality. For all of it, the makeup effects, vfx, and prosthetics team get grisly. Especially with genre notables like Larry Van Duynhoven (Upgrade, The Loved Ones, Lake Mungo), Nikki Gooley (The Matrix, Ghost Ship), Srinivas Janapati (Godzilla, Mad Max: Fury Road), and many more.
Kent takes a story submersed in a dark moment in history and uses extreme genre language to convey the horrors many endured during that period. This means that the gory deaths, suspense, unflinching violence, and waking nightmares will be too much for non-horror fans, and the sprawling, authentic period piece will ostracize traditional horror fans. But for those that are feeling a little more adventurous or don’t mind their horror more rooted in realism, Kent’s sophomore effort is a heady, primal experience.
This one is currently out in limited theaters and expanding on September 6.
