Review by Tristan Bishop
I will start this review by making a fair assumption about the readers of Brutal As Hell – you’ve probably seen a lot of horror films. And a favourite topic amongst horror film maker and viewers in the last 30 something years has been the serial killer. I’ll make another assumption – you may well have seen a romantic comedy or two in your time, perhaps one of those ones in which a 30-something lothario finds his soft side when forced to take care of a child or a monkey or something like that. Well, Chained is sort of a straight cross between both types of film. Kind of Maniac meets About a Boy. Almost. Interested? Confused? Let me explain.
The excellent Vincent D’Onofrio stars as Bob, just your average cab-driving misogynist serial killer, who we are first introduced to as he picks up a mother (Julia Ormond, in what basically amounts to a cameo appearance) and her young son Tim on their way home from a trip to see a scary movie. He drives them to his remote house, kills the mother, let leaves Tim unharmed. At first, he seems uncertain of what to do with the boy – obviously killing him is not an option, Bob only kills women throughout the film – and starts to demand that the boy be something between a housekeeper and a slave, doing the chores, but not allowed to touch the TV, and only allowed to eat what Bob leaves on his plate. Bob also renames the boy Rabbit.
The years pass and Tim grows into a teenager, played with a brilliant nervous awkwardness by Eamon Farren (whose features almost resemble his animal namesake), and the relationship between Bob and Rabbit changes – Rabbit cleans up Bob’s gory messes without much complaint, and Bob eventually tries to become some kind of father figure, trying to give Rabbit some kind of education (in anatomy, rather fittingly), and eventually attempting to mould him into Bob’s own image, whereas Rabbit, who seems content enough to carry on his slavish existence, wants to draw the line at committing murder himself. Eventually as Bob forces things towards his goals, Rabbit has some difficult choices to make.
Chained is not an easy watch by any means. It mostly plays as a two-character, one location film with occasional appearances by female victims and one or two excursions into the outside world. This is confidently pulled off by director Jennifer Lynch, who may finally, on her third feature, be showing enough talent to move out of the shadow of her father David. She shoots the film with sickly, diseased-feeling interior yellows, and the outside world as overpoweringly bright, heightening the feeling of intimacy between Bob and Rabbit when they are inside the house. As the film goes on interplay between them becomes more human, almost affectionate (almost), and Bob is given a flashback/dream sequence which gives us some clue as to why he is such a monster, and also to his intentions towards Rabbit. Both men’s performances are excellent, with D’Onofrio especially chillingly believable, and the tension that builds towards the film’s climax is very subtly handled.
For a film which features a character who inflicts a lot of violence towards women, there is a surprising scarcity of murder onscreen – there are a couple of onscreen killings and a mercifully brief flash of sexual violence, but mostly we see bodies in the aftermath as they are disposed of. I did discover that the film was actually cut down in the US from an NC-17 to an R rating with the removal of a few shots, so I’m not entirely convinced we have the uncut version here in the UK (I am unable to verify this). However, Chained is pretty damned disturbing in the form I viewed – more so because the horror here comes both from Bob’s own conviction that what he is doing is OK (“it’s because they are all whores,” he explains angrily to Rabbit, as if it should be obvious; “But they seem like nice people to me”, Rabbit contours, only to be told he just doesn’t get it), to the casual mundanity of the everyday existence of the two (such as playing memory games with the ID cards of the murdered women).
In fact, the only negative point I want to bring up with this film is also kind of the best thing about it – the ending. Without giving any spoilers, there are two elements to the ending. The first is actually brilliant, a rug-from-under-feet moment which works on confounding our own expectations about how film forces you to think. I actually gasped a ‘wow’ out loud to myself when watching (hopefully my flatmates weren’t listening). The second element seems to be a little too much of a standard Hollywood twist ending (could this have been down to studio meddling?), and whilst it would be a perfectly acceptable bit of work given some decent foreshadowing, it seems both unnecessary and pandering to those who wanted more resolution. I would love to discuss this further but spoilers prevent me – so do me a favour, go rent Chained, then come corner me, buy me a pint and we can talk. We’ll all come out of this on top, as Chained is an audacious, disturbing and fascinating film, and I like beer.
Chained is released to Region 2 DVD and Blu-Ray on 4th February, from Anchor Bay. For another take on the film, see Steph’s review from FrightFest 2012.