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DVD The Seasoning House
 Run time: 90 min Rating: 6.1 Genres: Horror | Thriller Director: Paul Hyett Writers: Paul Hyett, Conal Palmer Stars: Rosie Day, David Lemberg, Amanda Wass |
| Storyline In 1996, in the Balkans, the population of a small town is slaughtered by a militia under the command of the inhuman Goran that abducts young girls for prostitution in a brothel owned by the cruel Viktor. The deaf Angel that witnessed the execution of her mother has a weird birth mark on the face and Viktor chooses her to housework; to put makeup and drug the girls for the clients; and cleaning them up after the brutal encounters. Angel also sneaks between the walls and ventilation ducts during the night. Angel befriends the girl Vanya that knows the language of the deaf. When Goran returns to the house with his men, Angel witnesses one of them raping and killing Vanya and she revenges her new friend killing the man. Now Goran and his men are hunting her down and she is trapped in the house. Written by Claudio Carvalho, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil |
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| Plot Keywords: crawlspace, deaf mute, mass grave, shot in head, knife through hand | |
| Details: Country: UK Release Date: 21 June 2013 (UK) |
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The Seasoning House is a raw, powerful and, frankly, brilliant film. I recommend it, but it's not a date movie.
Hyett has clearly learnt a lot from his time on other film sets. The Seasoning House is a carefully crafted and controlled film which, at times, almost goes too far, but somehow manages to pull itself back from the brink. The direction is excellent, with Hyett infusing the first two acts with a slow, dreamlike, almost ethereal, feel that may reflect either Angel's resignation to the life that she now tolerates or the state of perpetual drug-based anaesthesia that the girls are constantly under.
Rosie Day is an absolute revelation. She is incredible as Angel and, although she doesn't utter a single word, her face tells us everything and we are never lost as to what Angel is feeling. It's notable that this is also Day's feature film debut. As such, and based on her performance here, I would expect to see a lot more of her in the future
The rest of the cast do a superb job. Willem Dafoe-alike Kevin Howarth is outstanding and tackles the role of Viktor with real conviction and we are torn between hating him (deservedly so) and as the film goes on, rooting for him. Sean Pertwee, as militia leader Goran, has never been more menacing, while Dominique Provost-Chalkley gives a brave performance as Vanya, especially considering all that the role entails.
It's bold cinema, make no mistake, and not a film to be taken lightly. Hyett's film is an uncompromising, unflinching and brutal glimpse into a real-life world of suffering that we, living out our comfortable little lives, simply cannot fathom and subsequently ignore. Hyett should be commended on making this film as honestly as this one. It's a film that sticks with you long after the credits have stopped rolling.
England's answer to Greg Nicotero moves away from the special make up effects and goes behind the camera to bring us this harrowing tale of Angel (Day, in a breath-taking debut), a girl ripped from her home during the war in the Balkans.
In war torn zones, military are kidnapping girls and selling them into the sex trade where they are sold to militia and civilians. Deaf and mute Angel is one of these girls who sees her mother murdered in front of her before being delivered to a brothel where she becomes the personal sex slave to its owner. A birthmark on her face makes her tainted goods so the owner, Viktor (Howarth), uses her to dope the girls with heroin to make them more amenable to their visitors, then clean them up afterwards. She spends her time away from the prying eyes of her captors crawling through the limited space of the ventilation system. Until an unplanned incident brings her head to head with the men who took her from her family.
Make no odds, The Seasoning House is not a comfortable watch but it is impossible to take your eyes from it. Based on true events of atrocities that happened during the war, Hyett brings us into a degenerate world of men willing to pay for sex with tied up, drugged women and pay extra to be rough with them. Some of the girls do not survive some of their "customers". The performances, especially from Day (watch out for her, she will be a name to take notice of) had to be good to make the film believable and to care about Angel. Howarth gives us a dark turn of a man just as at ease plunging a knife into the neck of a young girl to simply make a point as he is pouring a shot of whiskey.
Hyett builds a relationship between Angel and Viktor that enables the power dynamic between the two of them to change during the film. This is integral to some of the major turns in the story and needed to be handled delicately so as not to be too in your face about it but also sustain a sense of believability with the interaction of the two.
The Seasoning House is violent and gripping but never feels exploitative which was needed to ensure you retained a high level of empathy for Angel. It's hard to use the word enjoyed with this film but it is a superb piece of art that fully deserves wider recognition. If you get the chance and can stomach something more hard hitting than your usual Hollywood attempts and horror then I highly recommend this film.
A tragic tale of love, loss and death, this is one film you won't forget in a hurry.
In the directorial debut of special effects guru Paul Hyatt, young actress Rosie Day plays Angel, a deaf and mute girl who sees her family brutally murdered before she is dragged to the eponymous Seasoning House, where kidnapped girls are forced to into prostitution for soldiers of a bleak and senseless Balkan war. The first half of the film has a very dream-like quality to it, as Angel, who is enslaved to care for the prostituted girls, performs her daily routine of doping the victims, and then cleaning them up after they have suffered the soldiers often disturbingly brutal attentions. Hyatt has said he was heavily influenced by Pan's Labyrinth, and it certainly shows in this half as Angel silently wanders the seasoning house and we glimpse the world as she senses, or more accurately, doesn't sense it. But when ruthless soldier Goran, played by Sean Pertwee, and his men arrive on the scene, the same soldiers responsible for murdering Angel's family, she takes drastic action and the film swerves from darkly depressing, to a taut, tense and brutal game of cat and mouse. Rosie Day does well in the lead role, her character, subdued and distant in the beginning, shows signs of life as she recalls memories of her family, slowly bonds with one of the prostitutes who fortuitously knows sign language, and eventually comes to her aid as she suffers horrifically at the hands of one of Goran's men, the monstrous Ivan, while Goran himself is a fittingly cruel and tenacious main villain. The savage scenes of rape in the first half are offset by the brutal acts of revenge and survival in the second, each accompanied, as you would expect, by some great visual effects, but while the film is engaging throughout and comes to a satisfying conclusion, it felt slightly disjointed and meandered in places. However, that doesn't ever detract from the overall tone of the film, darkly foreboding and laced with a palpable sense of menace, it's a tense and disturbing ride.
Wow, okay… when I watched "The Seasoning House" at a modest genre festival in my home country, I anticipated quite a number of things, but I didn't anticipate this! The film was scheduled as the closing feature, which is normally a festive event in a light-headed ambiance, but surely this didn't make the audiences very happy! I admit not having read the plot synopsis in great detail in advance, but from reading it distantly it looked like a variation on the 'rape-and-revenge' sub genre, like "I Spit on your Grave", "Last House on the Left". These are seldom cheerful films, of course, given the harsh and exploitative subject matter, but "The Seasoning House" is more intense, devastating and tragic than any other thriller in its kind. It's somewhat of a feminist horror/rape-and-revenge flick, but one set against the background of the ravaging civil war in the Balkans during the mid-1990's. Not only does the menace of an inhumanly cruel and cold war feels incredibly authentic, the story also introduces young girls as defenseless victims of a depraved and heartless prostitution network. When the rest of her family is brutally massacred by soldiers, deaf-mute teenage Angel ends up in an illegal sort of brothel run by the sadist Victor in the middle of the woods. The squadron that killed her mother and sister passes by the house one day, so she sees her chance for retaliation. Through the crawlspaces and the ventilation circuit throughout the old house, Angel battles against the relentless commander Goran and his team of perverted soldiers. "The Seasoning House" truly hits you like an emotional sledgehammer, with a few cruel execution sequences, a thorough raw atmosphere and deeply depressing cinematography and music. The acting performances are extraordinary, particularly those of adolescent starlets Rosie Day and Dominique Provost-Chalkley. Also giving another superb (and very ungrateful) performance is British cult-actor Sean Pertwee as the stone-cold and heartless military commander Goran. A very strong and remarkable debut for special effects wizard Paul Hyett. Recommended, but definitely not for the faint-hearted.