Growing horror auteur, Mickey Keating, delivers a gritty love letter to grindhouse cinema that has no return address

“They say a man ain’t a man until he finds a purpose”

Carnage Park feels like the self-sufficient offspring of some drunken one-night stand between ‘70s grindhouse cinema and buddy road trip pictures, with Hitchcock’s Psycho briefly sneaking between the bed sheets to lend a helping hand (or curved index finger), too.

A remarkably succinct premise sees Vivian (Ashley Bell), our resident victim and audience surrogate, lost in a sprawling danger zone that’s not much different than if Jigsaw from the Saw franchise was given a bank loan to open up a Six Flags. Vivian is stranded, helpless, and hunted, and that’s pretty much all the necessary information you need with your admission ticket to this chaos. Once you’re sprung in this trap along with Vivian, the rest simply relishes the hopelessness of your likelihood of finding escape.

It’s interesting to watch Keating wrestle with the structural limitations that he’s placed on the previous works of his career. His prior film from this year, Darling (which still ranks as one of my favorite horror films of 2016), as well as Pod and even his debut feature, Ritual, are all claustrophobic, bottle episode-esque endeavors. They’re products designed to burrow and bounce against the walls of their minimalist constructs. In a sense, Carnage Park is still isolated to a lone location for the bulk of the film; it’s just that this cage is one with a lot more holding room.

While perhaps not as deep and affecting as Darling, Carnage Park shows a lot more confidence and ability than Keating’s first two directorial efforts. This is the work of someone who is consistently growing and experimenting as a filmmaker. Even when Carnage Park is missing its mark and discharging rounds at debris, Keating’s control never wavers. A grandiose western sort of feeling is draped over everything that brings Sam Peckinpah’s work to mind. Sweeping wide shots that linger on the scenery mix expertly with the grindhouse cinema aesthetics from the period in which the film is set. Keating even utilizes an intrusive faded look to the film stock to further invite the comparison to the pulpy cinema that he’s aping. A flawless title card and opening disclaimer further set the tone and place you within this beautifully exaggerated nightmare. You’re trapped in a world of misogynistic men who have no qualms with punching a woman in the face. The same world where a scrappy damsel-in-distress type can perpetually tow the line between morphing into a badass femme fatale.

At this point it’s clear that Keating is adept at tapping into many sub-genres of horror and is not just some shiny one-trick pony. Each of his films are wildly different, yet seamlessly invade the worlds of which they’re paying homage. Even something as simple as shots of someone driving or opening a door receive added poignancy when put through Keating’s grindhouse filter. Not a single frame here is wasted. Add to that a moving score and soundtrack that succeed at not being too cliché, yet are still properly representing the ‘70s and grindhouse atmosphere. At the same time, the music still amplifies the horror and tension being thrown at you while managing to be subversive to a typical horror soundtrack.

Carnage Park’s simplicity is no doubt part of its charm. It almost feels like the film wants you to generalize it as a standard “cat and mouse” narrative before hobbling the idea at the knees. Playing with your expectations is all part of the plan here. At just about every opportunity where it feels like you’re able to pin down what sort of movie this is, a drastic U-turn is taken and the film’s focus continues to shift. The film’s fast-paced story and pared down runtime (the whole film clocks in at under an economical 80 minutes) help contribute to this feeling of being lost. You’re just as powerless and disoriented as Vivian. You, as an audience, stumble upon the horrorground that is Carnage Park as innocently as its victims. Keating again proves that he’s a master at putting you in the head of his films’ protagonists, heightening the fear accordingly. You’re just as confused and suspicious as Vivian is towards elements like a random record player.

Keating trades his usual muse, Lauren Ashley Carter, for the promising Ashley Bell (of The Last Exorcism fame), who more than rises to the challenge. Bell does frantic work to turn Vivian into someone who you’re not just hopelessly rooting for, but also cheering along with whenever she gets one up on her victimizers. Vivian’s struggle is shown as a merciless game. Obstacles come in the form of traumatizing acts like handcuffing Vivian to a headless corpse while she has to navigate through a figurative—and in some ways literal—minefield. It’s the stuff of nightmares. It also feels like perhaps Vivian’s captor is trying to warp and shape her as she continues to go through this gauntlet. You can’t help but witness the change that’s happening in Bell’s performance, too. This film more than a few times reminded me of one of my favorite Tales From the Crypt episodes, “Carrion Death,” except it goes to an even further extreme in some respects.

CARNAGE PARK | image via Sundance

Vivian’s ordeal plays like a descent into Hell as she stumbles into makeshift catacombs and gets deeper and deeper into trouble. Vivian’s surroundings seem increasingly less normal and she has absolutely no clue of the scope of her mess. All the while, the warped, intimidating voice of the Devil thunders over everything and reiterates Vivian’s feeling of frailty. The film does effective work to focus on background elements like the ticking of a clock or pulling other minutiae to the foreground as a creative way of accentuating certain trauma. Keating uses more of that strobe-y horror effect that is so prominent in Darling, but it’s at least given a justified context. It doesn’t feel like he’s just derivatively using his old skills. There is also all sorts of upsetting imagery that becomes more in your face as Vivian gets deeper into this demon’s nest. The gas mask visual is an unnerving one and the film knows it. There’s also a chair in the mines that is truly haunting and could give Le Chiffre’s piece of furniture from Casino Royale a run for its chair-money.

The film plays around with exposition and backstory in a very devil may care sort of fashion. There’s a stylistic mini-montage that flashes all of Scorpion Joe’s (James Landry Hebert) history at you in a matter of seconds that’s genius exposition work. It’s almost like it subliminally plants the broader strokes of his past into your brain. Then again, all of this loaded backstory is ultimately useless with Scorpion Joe almost acting as the film’s de facto Marion Crane. This exposition is all part of the trick that’s being played on you.

Adversely, the film’s villain, Wyatt Moss (Pat Healy), in fact gains power by Keating being uninterested in explaining him. There are plenty of details to shade in on the unhinged religious fanatic, but the film wisely keeps him obscured rather than overusing the frightening enigma. The same can be said regarding the relationship between Wyatt and his brother who’s in law enforcement (a welcome Alan Ruck).

Chronicling the history between the two of them, digging into just how much of a strain Wyatt has been on his brother could yield fascinating results. I’d gladly watch another half hour of their past disagreements. Instead your imagination is left to work overtime while you alternatively focus on the fallout of a growing story where you’re only privy to select pieces. A single scene where Ruck’s character coaches himself into denial over what he’s allowing his brother to get away with speaks volumes.

This amounts to Carnage Park adopting a rather unique non-linear structure that allows it to insert flashbacks into the story at opportune times. Every piece of info that’s given to you is done so very deliberately and expressly at Keating’s discretion in order to maximize what’s happening. You only know what you do when he wants you to, and the film plays into that manipulation. You never have the full picture, even when the credits roll at the end.

In fact, the film plays with such a large canvas but only allows you to see a tiny piece of the whole that I wouldn’t have minded this obliviousness actually informing the end of the movie. There are so many threads of story going on here—like the entire scene with Travis (a glorified Larry Fessenden cameo) that’s never returned to—that I would have been fine if some never-before-seen random ultimately ended up taking down Wyatt. Some prisoner that he’s just completely forgotten about since his “amusement park” has grown to be so out of hand. It’d surely frustrate some viewers, but it’d act as a nice reflection of the nature of this place and the overlapping vignettes of hopelessness that the film keeps sharing.

Carnage Park might not be Mickey Keating’s best work, but it’s still an encouraging step forward. It aims for the right targets, is riddled in style, and leaves the chamber quickly enough for you to want more. It makes the anticipation towards his next film, Psychopaths (a huge serial killer ensemble picture) and whatever follows, all the more exciting. Even more so is the sheer voracity at which Keating is making movies (he’ll have put three films out this year) and the quality not dipping. Amusingly enough, it’s safe to say that one of 2016’s best horror entries is this film that is right out of the ‘70s.

‘Carnage Park’ is now available on VOD and in theaters in New York City, with an LA release coming later this month