A brutally violent, well-made exploitation drama, Donkey Punch showed up at the Atlantic Film Festival last year but never got a theatrical release, which is too bad. Given the increasingly inane and repetitious torture porn pictures getting wide releases and spawning sequels, there's no reason this picture couldn't drum up some attention from cinema audiences. In it, three lovely but none-too-bright students from Leeds are on a vacation in Majorca, Spain.
There they meet four equally thick lads who work on an enormous luxury yacht. Cue the boat trip and a lovely day on the water, including swimming, recreational drugs and group sex, leading to the violent sexual maneuver of the title. Not unexpectedly, further bloodshed follows in great, gushing quantities, but it's a credit to the filmmakers that they manage to rein in the plot developments to at least the outer realms of plausibility. It would be nice, though, if there was at least one relatable, likeable person in the movie, or if the meekest characters weren't secretly homicidal and/or psychopathic. The morbid fascination with how it will end and who will be left alive does hold the interest, even when the boat begins to resemble an abattoir. It is very hard to look away.
