Review of Donkey Punch (2008) by Sean H — 08 Aug 2008

OLLY Blackburn's boring slasher pic has a one-track mind and no soul.

The tale of three holidaying Leeds girls (Jaime Winstone, Nichola Burley and Sian Breckin) who come to grief on a deadly night of drugs, sex, knives and chainsaws on a yacht on the Mediterranean with a bunch of no-good posh boys (Jay Taylor, Tom Burke, Julian Morris and Robert Boulter), it provides a desultory home-movie-style set up before running through a heartless compilation of every cheap horror movie gimmick you've ever seen.

The result resembles a dumbed-down version of Dead Calm, a film that was hardly that dumbed-up to start with.

Principal problems: a fatal lack of characterisation (I couldn't tell the characters apart, except for Burke, who seemed even more stupid than the others - probably more because of his appalling performance than Blackburn and David Bloom's duff script) and a lack of suspense (you're just waiting for people you don't care about to get slaughtered, one by one).

The title relates to an experimental sexual technique which is fatally carried out out in a lurid orgy scene, thus causing all the trouble. Don't try it at home, kids.