69) Donkey Punch (2008)

69) Donkey Punch (2008) Dir: Oliver Blackburn Date Released: January 2009 Date Seen: March 10^th, 2009 Rating: 0.75/5

While the worst slasher films have never needed a mandate beyond having the fundamental cliches of the genre on tap--a desolate locale, a murderous lunatic and a lot of pretty people--Oliver Blackburn, the co-writer/director of Donkey Punch (2008), has seriously got some ‘splainin to do. In spite of how amiably crass his premise almost is—pretty dumb young things go out on a yacht and one of them gets donkey punched to death—one has to wonder: just what exactly was he thinking when he made this film? 

I might have given Blackburn the benefit of the doubt if he had given me a single way to sympathize with anyone in the film, even just the girls that have live long enough to kill off their dopey and doped-up attackers. The story plods along in the hope that viewer will have sympathy for these mouthy and utterly uninteresting meat puppets because they're in peril but never provides one except for outlandish murders and pretty scenery. All we know about these girls is that they look good in a bikini, they're British, they like to party and they don’t want to die. In other words, they're Greek tourists. That's such a basic staple of the genre and seemingly such a hard one to fuck up that the fact that Blackburn couldn’t make anything out of it makes me need to reiterate my original question. 

The obvious answer, apart from creative constipation, is that there’s no way to be both nasty and good-looking. Apart from the grisly and unintentionally hilarious deaths, Donkey Punch might very well be an avant garde travel brochure. The eye candy squirm about in skimpy clothes behind a backdrop of blue waters filmed in hyper-stylized DV, as if the natural charms of the kids’ and their exotic surroundings’ weren’t enough to seduce the viewer. Looks like Blackburn had some foresight, even if his vision is otherwise pretty myopic, to put it mildly.

Note: Be thankful I didn't put up the, ahem, thematically related image of the guy in the donkey costume with boxing gloves on. Hell, I'll be thankful for you.