Wound 2010 - REVIEW

We've all felt it at one point or another. That stabbing pain of guilt or grief. The unabashed desire for retribution that can completely consume you. People will tell you that grief is a natural process and that over time it will subside. But what happens when someone internalizes all those emotions to the point where they can no longer function? When they are so overwhelmed by it that the lines between what's real and what's imagined completely breaks?

A supernatural horror film that explores the dark worlds of mental illness, incest, revenge and death. We follow Tanya (Te Kaea Beri) as she searches for the mother she has never met - Susan (Kate O'Rourke) who gave her up for dead after being abused by her own father. Tanya returns from the dead to confront and possess Susan with all her deepest fears and desires, sending Susan into a state of madness and gore filled retribution. Is all this real or has the line between reality and imagination finally been completely severed?

The best thing about Wound is without a doubt O'Rourke. She conveyed the emotions of a mentally disturbed woman very convincingly. Her pain throughout the entire film seemed genuine and you couldn't help but feel for her character, at least I did anyway. Beri did a fine job as the long lost daughter who apparently picked up some of Mommy Dearest's mental problems in utero. There isn't really much to say about the other characters. Most of them were just there to help demonstrate the intensity of Susan's psychosis. Were they real or were they just part of her imagination? What about Tanya? Did she really exist or was she created by Susan out of the guilt she felt for giving her up? Damn, I think this film drove me nuts!

The one consistent thing throughout Wound is that it never slows down. It plays out at break neck speeds bombarding you with visual components that for the most part don't make sense. This can be a detriment to the film or it can be an advantage, depending on the viewer  I suppose. About 45 minutes in, I was cursing myself for even putting in the DVD so I turned it off and went to do other things to try and clear my head but the more things I did, the more I thought about this film. That's when I realized, I had it all wrong. I was "seeing" it instead of "watching" it, if that makes sense. Ok let's try this, director David Blyth created something that relies heavily on the viewer being able to take a step back from what they're actually seeing and think about the story. It's not a Michael Bay film where you only need the attention span of a gnat to understand it. Parts of it are delivered through surrealistic dream like sequences that require a particular kind of fan to be able to understand it. Not everyone will get it but there is definitely an audience out there for it.