Anthony DiBlasi’s 2018 film Extremity was quite a surprise to me, given the simple premise. I’ve seen a lot of horror movies about haunted house attractions, and not many of them are good. But this one’s got a special quality that I can’t quite put a name to, something that really made it work for me.
Extremity follows Allison (Dana Christina), a young woman with psychological trauma using an “extreme haunt” attraction as a form of therapy. Not only did Allison lose her mother, she also had a horribly abusive relationship with her father, and she feels mostly dead to the world. She uses horror movies to try to shock herself into feeling something, but to no avail, and her girlfriend grows increasingly agitated by her lack of interest in any of life’s pleasures. But when she finds an extreme haunt that promise grueling hours of legal torture in exchange for her signing away her all her rights, she believes she’s found the key to working through her issues.
At face value, it sounds like a movie where you can guess just about every plot point. But I was surprised by how adventurous Extremity was, and how well it utilized the psychological horror aspects of the story. There wasn’t anything particularly scary about the story, and most of the torture scenes were pretty tame (that is if you’re expecting gratuitous amounts of blood), but the movie truly succeeds in blurring the line between what’s really happening to Allison and what’s part of the elaborate mind game she’s subjected herself to.
The only part of Extremity that rubbed me the wrong way was the framing device used to tell the story. A pair of Japanese journalists is filming Allison’s experience for a documentary, and their only purpose in the story seems to be to provide commentary on America’s fixation on violence and torture. One of the journalists tell the other that there’s supposed to be beauty in cruelty, and America doesn’t understand that. Maybe their role in the movie was part of a larger message that I just didn’t care to hear, but I feel like all they did was distract from the main action, and every time they were on screen I felt somewhat bored.
Dana Christina does a great job as Allison, especially during the physical torture scenes. She’s given a lot of emotional material to work with, especially since we know almost all of Allison’s backstory ranging from her childhood to present day. As acting goes, I was most impressed with her work.
Extremity feels like a Clive Barker story, perhaps one from his “Books of Blood” collection (which Hulu completely fucked up, by the way). The similarity is no coincidence; DiBlasi was executive producer on two adaptations of Barker’s work, The Midnight Meat Train and The Book of Blood, and he directed the feature film Dread. DiBlasi is clearly influenced by Barker’s unique presentation of sexuality and violence, and he’s able to present the most uncomfortable moments in a beautiful way.
There’s also the idea of flesh as a mask, something we wear outside of our true selves in order to fool the world into seeing what may not be true. This theme comes full circle near the end of the film, and while I won’t spoil specifics, I’ll say that the gruesome makeup effects were spot-on.
Extremity is a movie I look forward to showing to unsuspecting friends when they ask for movie recommendations. They may never speak to me again, but at least I’ll have pointed them toward something truly unique and beautifully vile.
7/10
Throughout the month of October, I’ll be reviewing 31 movies I’ve never seen before. Is there an excellent movie you think I haven’t seen? Tell me in the comments below, and I’ll check it out!
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