This is a difficult film to like, but it's also a difficult to turn your eyes away from because as reprehensible as what James Booth and his sons due to the alleged rapist and killer of his daughter, if he is indeed guilty, you can't help but feel that he deserves that, or worse. At the beginning of the film, you see Booth and his second wife, Joan Collins, coming out of a funeral, and it turns to be for their only child together. He has children from his first marriage, and her stepdaughter resents her. When you first see the alleged rapist (Kenneth Griffith), he is standing in front of a girl school, obviously looking at them, and that is just creepy. Booth, another friend whose daughter was also killed after being raped and his son track Griffith down and chase him through a tunnel, tossing him in the trunk, beating him up and leaving him dead in their basement. When Collins and the other daughter find out (on separate occasions), they have completely different reactions, and when it comes time to kill Griffith, nobody can make the final move, leaving them open to being discovered.
This is very direct and to the point, with mostly no unnecessary violence outside of what is done to Griffith initially, and a bit later on, just a family in mourning and in crisis, and that second sequence of violence does go a bit too far, resulting in a bizarre twist concerning Collins and stepson Tom Marshall. But the emotional anxiety that this family is feeling could cause any family to go off the deep end, and there is also the wondering if Griffith who doesn't get much to say could indeed not be guilty. It's a thriller about the publuc taking the law into their own hands, filled with a lot of tension and realistic performances by Booth and Collins. It's a hard film to watch, but it's also a plotline that could be ripped off the front headlines. While the title of the American release does indicate elements of horror, it's a different kind of horror, one every family hopes that it never has to go through.
This is very direct and to the point, with mostly no unnecessary violence outside of what is done to Griffith initially, and a bit later on, just a family in mourning and in crisis, and that second sequence of violence does go a bit too far, resulting in a bizarre twist concerning Collins and stepson Tom Marshall. But the emotional anxiety that this family is feeling could cause any family to go off the deep end, and there is also the wondering if Griffith who doesn't get much to say could indeed not be guilty. It's a thriller about the publuc taking the law into their own hands, filled with a lot of tension and realistic performances by Booth and Collins. It's a hard film to watch, but it's also a plotline that could be ripped off the front headlines. While the title of the American release does indicate elements of horror, it's a different kind of horror, one every family hopes that it never has to go through.