Not my Horror Flavour
When her family are murdered by soldiers deaf-mute Angel (Rosie Day) is abducted by the soldiers and along with other taken girls end up at a dirty brothel in the Balkans. Due to a birthmark on her neck and brothel owner Viktor (Kevin Howarth) taking a shine to her Angel isn't forced to have sex with the men who frequent the place just Viktor that is when she isn't tending to the dirty, bruised girls who are forced into becoming drugged up sex slaves. But Angel has learned to navigate the building through the series of tiny air ducts, befriending one of the girls who knows how to sign. Plotting their escape Angel finds herself with a chance of revenge when the men who murdered her family show up.
"The Seasoning House" is no Hollywood crowd pleasing horror, this is a visually dirty movie with no glamour or scares and it often features subtitles. But it is a conflicted movie or at least a movie which leaves me heavily conflicted as to how I feel about it. Visually I think it has great impact and the whole set up of these girls being forced in to becoming sex slaves thanks to soldiers is disturbing and in truth when you think that there could be places like this the disturbing nature of the movie is at its most powerful.
But then "The Seasoning House" is another one of those movies which come down to scenes of female torture and brutalisation followed by revenge brutalisation, something which has never sat comfortably with me and whilst this doesn't glorify the abuse of women that some of these movies do it does still go a little too far in showing it rather than allowing the audience to imagine what horror is going on instead.
What this all boils down to is that "The Seasoning House" is many things from being visually striking to disturbing for various reasons. But this isn't your typical Hollywood horror and as such won't be to everyone's liking especially those who are hoping for a more commercial type of horror.
