Review of Southbound (2015) by Dimitri C — 24 Oct 2016

If you are going to watch Southbound, understand that you are agreeing to a, "Who will blink first?" challenge with its several talented directors, and you will not win.

Even the brief segues that connect the omnibus stylized stories end up being unapologetically brutal, and rather difficult to shake. More so than anything you'd find in a similar style of films in the V/H/S trilogy, for example.

This is dark, grisly stuff - and it doesn't pretend to be anything else. It's an exhausting experience, particularly one scene mid-movie that refuses to cut away from the most nightmarish surgical scene in recent memory, but it should impress enough to buy your favor, even if it does torment you - shameless - at times. For example, when compared to other recently released American horror films that tried to pull off this anthology approach, Southbound is a momumental success in that it provides enough so you can walk away with a coherent storyline, and connect each segment pretty smoothly. It just takes the whole run time before you start to figure out how each puzzle piece fits, (which might frustrate some), but I'd wager that veteran genre fans will be too distracted and/or disturbed with what's currently on the screen in front of them, such that trying to predict any sort of ending, even after completing 80% of the film, would be nearly impossible.