INCREDIBLE VIOLENCE **** 2018 Canada Dir: G. Patrick Condon. 92 mins
Inexperienced actress Grace (M.J. Kehler) takes a gig on a slasher fic with hack director G. Patrick Condon (Stephen Oats) who’s accidentally spent all of his production money before he started filming. To save cash and his own ass he decides that the best solution to his problems is to murder his cast on film. What could go wrong?!
This is a movie about making movies, and reflects how the filmmaker (the real-life Condon, not the character who shares his name) feels about how women are treated in Hollywood. Was it a little heavy handed? Yes. Did I enjoy watching it? Hell yes. As Kehler transforms from the wide-eyed ingénue into the bloody, beaten final girl, she eats her first meal in days and utters the iconic line, “I fucking love movies”—a stark contrast to Condon’s “I fucking hate movies.”
It’s an interesting study of the toxicity of Hollywood, gender roles, and the violence that pervades popular culture, and as the cast descends into madness and the director falls on his sword, you can’t help but fucking love movies, too.
Review by Julia Lynch
