The Furies: BRWC FrightFest Review.

Kayla (Airlie Dodds) is kidnapped and finds herself an unwilling participant in a deadly game of survival. She, along with seven other women, must fight for their lives as they are hunted by eight masked men. Stranded in a barren land, fending for herself, Kayla must decide what extremes she’s willing to go to in order to survive.

The Furies is a female-led survival/ cabin-in-the-woods’esque horror with an interesting spin on a well-worn premise. Director Tony D’Aquino taps into a particularly specific flavour of The Most Dangerous Game.

There are elements of Friday the 13^th, Texas Chainsaw Massacre and The Hills Have Eyes but retrofitted with sci-fi with shades of Running Man and refreshingly enough, Vincenzo Natali’s 1997 flick, Cube. Similarly, there’s at least one scene that flagrantly borrows from Neil Marshall’s The Descent but at 82 minutes, the movie zips along so expediently you hardly notice.

Dodds is excellent as Kayla. Her arc is given a powerful resolution and there’s a very real sense of urgency in her performance. She suffers from a medical condition called ‘blatant plot contrivance’, but again, it works within the mechanics of the movie if you don’t think too hard on it.

Linda Ngo portrays a more vulnerable character that incrementally notches up the women’s plight and adds a degree of unpredictability. Unfortunately, most of the actors don’t get much time to make an impact beyond the brutal manner in which they’re murdered.

Oh, and they are most definitely murdered. The Furies makes great use of both digital and practical effects, which in most cases blend seamlessly together. The gruesomeness and grotesquery are inventive and well shot with sound design that matches the torturous deaths to a nauseating degree. There are some very specific injuries I don’t want to spoil that will make you squirm.

While the not-so-subtle social subtext lays the breadcrumbs for a potential follow-up, this is a movie that can be enjoyed at face value. That being said, it would be remiss of me not mention the fact that if every member of your mostly female cast is an intended victim, diving behind the Sarah Connor protagonist arc isn’t as progressive as it was in 1991.

The Furies sprints frantically for survival with a compelling story, a rock-solid performance from Airlie Dodds and captivating cinemaphotography by Garry Richards.

The Furies is released next month.

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