What . . .
It’s going to be difficult to discuss this movie without giving too much away. Seeing as it’s a new film, I don’t want to go too in depth and spoil it for anyone.
A Wounded Fawn is . . . bizarre. Yet, when you take away the bizarre imagery, it has a pretty straight forward plot. A serial killer brings a woman to his house in the woods (both of them keep calling it a cabin and it’s clearly not a cabin) and things don’t go quite as the killer planned. If you were to take all the craziness out of the last third of the movie, it’s probably a pretty boring flick, honestly. If not boring, certainly nothing new.
But the crazy gets turned up to a thousand and you’re wondering what the fuck you’re watching for twenty or thirty minutes, thinking the movie has gone too off the rails to ever make sense. And then, when you thought it wasn’t possible, it kind of makes sense in the end. Not completely, but enough. That final scene is great, the way it just keeps going and going, even as the credits role. I would love to see more directors doing something similar.
I’m a bit conflicted on how I feel about A Wounded Fawn. There is great gore. The actors are all talented. The film is obviously well made. But it kind of seems like the writers had this basic serial killer plot and decided to just throw as much crazy bullshit in the middle of it just to mix it up and make it different. Toward the end of this nutty, fever dream part of the film, it becomes tiresome. The characters are repeating themselves in both dialogue and action, and I was about ready to throw in the towel if it weren’t for some of the great visuals.
The red owl thing is creepy as hell. Petal and I didn’t really watch it in a setting conducive to frightening us, but if we’d turned down the lights and eliminated outside distractions, it would probably be a pretty scary flick. But maybe not. The suspense-building was not constant. Instead, it felt jagged, like there were moments where the suspense was intensifying but then it would drop off and start again from a knew plane.
Though I enjoyed the final scene quite a lot, it still felt like a let down. With all the craziness that preceded it, I wanted a more fulfilling resolution at the conclusion. That’s the best I can say without spoiling anything.
PC3’s Horror and Exploitation Movie Scale of Awesomeness!
Gore - 6
Special Effects - 6
Nudity/Sexuality - 5
Wow Factor - 7
Acting - 7
Fear Factor - 6
Story/Plot/Originality - 5
Cinematography/Atmosphere - 7
Sound/Music - 7
Fun Factor - 4
A nice 60 PHEMSA for A Wounded Fawn. It might be one I would have to watch again to fully understand. Petal has already stated she has no intention of viewing it a second time. I’ll have to explore why that is. She has said the same of Eraserhead and The Human Centipede. It’s easy to see why someone wouldn’t want to watch those two more than once. But it’s not as clear with this one why she feels that way. Anyway, if you want to give it a go, it’s on Shudder.