Donkey Punch on DVD (2008)

Donkey Pish

Al80 from Brighton, England [Highly rated reviewer] , 09/07/2008

I can't remember the last time that a movie squandered as much goodwill in such a short space of time as this one does. The first half is genuinely terrific, as six lairy, sexed-up twenty-somethings flirt, take drugs and confabulate on a yacht anchored off the coast of an unnamed Spanish island. Its like Hollyoaks as directed by Larry Clark, and it is totally gripping.

But as soon as the titular incident occurs (and the titular incident really does occur; just in case anyone else suspected that the title was merely a jocular come-on) the plot suddenly helter skelters straight into a brick wall; turning into the kind of dated, tiresome trash that isn't only shockingly predictable, but also entirely unaware of its own predictability. The film's twists are broadly apparent a full ten minutes before they occur onscreen, which makes for an experience that isn't only boring, but also deeply and repeatedly annoying.

This is one of those thrillers in which every cast member gets a turn playing the volatile psychopath, purely because the script can't get around the fact that the previous character to go loopy has just been safely locked in a cupboard.

It never once stops being faultlessly directed - debutante Oliver Blackburn coaxes some really outstanding performances from his young cast, and there are a couple of devilish moments of genuine suspense and black comedy - but these jiffys are like a tiny number of slowly deflating rubber dinghies sinking into a gigantic ocean of generic pish.

People merely looking for explicit sex will be very well served, but the violence and gore is surprisingly tame for something that's being marketed as a plasma-stained killfest.

A very brief, but nevertheless apt and effective homage to Phillip Noyce's Dead Calm aside (a film so infinitely superior that I feel guilty for even having mentioned it here) this is just a shoddy, witless bore of a film.

And it all started so well.

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Donkey Punch

SAI81 from Tonbridge [Highly rated reviewer] , 26/07/2008

To begin with I was warming to Donkey Punch. It put me in a great mood with an opening party montage set to a stonkingly good remix of The Knife’s Heartbeats, then proceeded to make fine use of Peter, Bjorn and John’s equally wonderful Young Folks. A shame, then, that everything but the music turned out to be a horrible let down.

Take three completely interchangeable girls (Breckin, Burley and Winstone), put them on a yacht with four pretty much interchangeable lads (Boulter, Burke, Morris and Taylor), add one horrible accident (involving the titular Donkey Punch) and watch as the Plot-O-Matic 3000 clanks ever onwards, and there you have Donkey Punch.

To begin with, the screenwriting, by Director Blackburn and David Bloom, is horrendous. The three girls are basically one character whose dialogue has been distributed between three mouthpieces. They are also horrible depictions of women; retrograde cliché slags, misogyny on legs. The boys are equally odious, and almost equally devoid of character, though to give Blackburn and Bloom a modicum of credit they have managed (in Burke’s vile Bluey) managed to create one character that stands out from the others, even if he is as pathetically one note as all the rest.

It’s not like the acting helps either. Burke is the chief offender, delivering lines that actually might occasionally be amusing in a monotone that sapped my will to live from the off, his every line ends up sounding like a low drone, so little variation does he employ in his delivery. The other actors all struggle to shift their performances to the events of the last half of the film, and so they end up (particularly in the case of the boys) being laughably unconvincing, and draining what little potential the film ever had to be scary given the inept and cliché ridden writing. The girls do marginally better in that they do manage to play the one note their characters ask of them (Breckin: Slutty. Winstone: Slightly less slutty, tough. Burley:… actually she has no personality at all).

The second half of the film should be mainlining tension with the same zeal with which the characters approach taking drugs, but it doesn’t. The scares are rote, there’s no clear villain established (indeed the characterisation becomes incredibly confused and haphazard, with people completely changing from scene to scene), even the splatter is done rather half heartedly, mostly off screen, and the big moment is telegraphed hopelessly early. It’s also impossible to be frightened because there’s no way in hell you could care about the ciphers wandering around this boat.

Donkey Punch is a depressing film, a boring plod through the hoariest of clichés, played by dead eyed mannequins and written and directed with all the imagination of a youtube video, which likely means it will make a shedload of money, sadly.

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DONT BOTHER

A customer from HARLOW , 10/11/2008

I turned this film off after 15 minutes acting was sooo bad, what a let down

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Enjoyable British Horror

A customer from Wolverhampton , 20/07/2008

I saw this today, and it is a realy good Birtish made Horror film...one that makes a refreshing change from the American drivel that often gets wider recognition because of the bigger budgets. However, Donkey Punch is a film made well, it doesn't comes across as a low budget film and it deserves to be shown at the big screen. There are plenty of moments that make you feel uncomfortable and tense, and whilst some may think it is extreme, it is a genuinely horrifying film which shows just how far some people would go for drugs, sex, and their own survival. But be warned, the sex scenes are explicit and there is nothing left to the imagination...you pretty much see everything of the male and female leads...which is my final point...I give top marks as well for the male frontal nudity (lots)...it makes a change from all the blonde big breasted american bimbos we often see screaming and running in other horror films...!!

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Donkey Punch

SAI81 from Tonbridge [Highly rated reviewer] , 26/07/2008

To begin with I was warming to Donkey Punch. It put me in a great mood with an opening party montage set to a stonkingly good remix of The Knife’s Heartbeats, then proceeded to make fine use of Peter, Bjorn and John’s equally wonderful Young Folks. A shame, then, that everything but the music turned out to be a horrible let down.

Take three completely interchangeable girls (Breckin, Burley and Winstone), put them on a yacht with four pretty much interchangeable lads (Boulter, Burke, Morris and Taylor), add one horrible accident (involving the titular Donkey Punch) and watch as the Plot-O-Matic 3000 clanks ever onwards, and there you have Donkey Punch.

To begin with, the screenwriting, by Director Blackburn and David Bloom, is horrendous. The three girls are basically one character whose dialogue has been distributed between three mouthpieces. They are also horrible depictions of women; retrograde cliché slags, misogyny on legs. The boys are equally odious, and almost equally devoid of character, though to give Blackburn and Bloom a modicum of credit they have managed (in Burke’s vile Bluey) managed to create one character that stands out from the others, even if he is as pathetically one note as all the rest.

It’s not like the acting helps either. Burke is the chief offender, delivering lines that actually might occasionally be amusing in a monotone that sapped my will to live from the off, his every line ends up sounding like a low drone, so little variation does he employ in his delivery. The other actors all struggle to shift their performances to the events of the last half of the film, and so they end up (particularly in the case of the boys) being laughably unconvincing, and draining what little potential the film ever had to be scary given the inept and cliché ridden writing. The girls do marginally better in that they do manage to play the one note their characters ask of them (Breckin: Slutty. Winstone: Slightly less slutty, tough. Burley:… actually she has no personality at all).

The second half of the film should be mainlining tension with the same zeal with which the characters approach taking drugs, but it doesn’t. The scares are rote, there’s no clear villain established (indeed the characterisation becomes incredibly confused and haphazard, with people completely changing from scene to scene), even the splatter is done rather half heartedly, mostly off screen, and the big moment is telegraphed hopelessly early. It’s also impossible to be frightened because there’s no way in hell you could care about the ciphers wandering around this boat.

Donkey Punch is a depressing film, a boring plod through the hoariest of clichés, played by dead eyed mannequins and written and directed with all the imagination of a youtube video, which likely means it will make a shedload of money, sadly.

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Utter tripe

A customer from London , 18/11/2008

Hated it. Hysterical, senseless and predictable.

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