3 (2017)
Matt Boiselle
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Starring Todd Bruno, Mike Stanley, Aniela McGuinness
Directed by Lou Simon
The delve for truth in the face of a horrific personal crime is on the menu with director Lou Simon’s rape-revenge thriller, 3 – and there’s something infinitely unsettling about these films to me. Ms. 45, I Spit On Your Grave – they’re usually a “one and done” kind of thing as far as viewing replay value goes, however this particular film had a somewhat different structure to it.
The movie opens up with a man (Stanley) who is relying on his GPS to aid him in his travels to a meeting that he’s quickly becoming very late for, and when a roadblock leaves he and his vehicle at a bit of an impasse. Well, needless to say he becomes the victim of a backwoods kidnapping of sorts – but here’s the thing: I’m wondering how many of you thought that this poor sap was an innocent soul, caught up in a senseless crime against a passing motorist? Oh no, you silly people – and before you get all whiny about spoilers and such, this film blows the lid off of its premise early on, and thrives on this undertaking of “victim’s payback.” What we end up seeing is a calculated gameplan to reel in a suspected rapist by both a man (Bruno) and the woman (McGuiness) whom he supposedly attacked a year prior, but was never convicted due to a lack of evidence against him. Pretty salty stuff, and we lay witness to this man, who is now tied up and is tortured in the hopes of obtaining a forced video confession – if things only went so smoothly.
While many horror and thriller flicks would revel in some scumbag rapist getting castrated with a dull butter knife at close camera-view, 3 instead takes this opportunity to gravitate its energy on those who’ve been impacted by such a horrendous act towards another human being, giving them a sense of entitlement in their brand of home-made punishment, if you will. There begins a shift of emotions that takes place, and as sad as it is to say, the attacker’s mental-framework is unraveled and the glint of sympathy starts to overtake the audience – wait just a friggin’ minute, he’s the bad guy, isn’t he? This is where Simon’s directorial shine begins to glow like a burning star visible from a million miles away – we all could have simply chalked this one up to another sexual crime-payback film, but 3 is considerably much more than that, and while the performances from the trio at first could be best described as a bit stagnant, as the film rolls along, their portrayals of people at opposite ends of the trauma scale are simply engrossing to take in. The initial view of attacker/victim ends up like one of those onions that keeps getting peeled, revealing an endless spin of depths, and by the time you get to the meat of the matter, your mind is spent from the process, but you end up with a totally inverted perspective of what’s just happened.
I could certainly recommend 3 to viewers who are looking for much more than a simple torture-porn film to chew up some of their time, and while there are some slow spots in its pacing and delivery, it’s the overall product that that acts as a vehicle of surprise and undoing – make sure to give this one a hard look when it becomes available.
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Film
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