Donkey Punch, cowritten and directed by newcomer Oliver Blackburn, is a mostly forgettable entry in the thriller/horror genre. Three young women vacationing in Spain meet a group of young men, the crew of a yacht. At the men's suggestion, the group continues the party aboard the yacht. Several pills of ecstasy and hits of crystal meth later, most of the group goes below deck for a sexual romp. When the sex turns violent, and one of the women is accidentally murdered, a race to cover up the crime begins, with the men each considering their own ability to come out of the ordeal with clean hands, and the remaining pair of women wanting to call authorities. From here, the plot is a succession of missteps and attempted escapes, with the body count increasing throughout. The film all but squanders its trapped-aboard-a-boat-with-the-bad-guy premise--it's been done better many times before--and though dressed up like a standard suspense thriller, Donkey Punch actually takes most of its cues from the slasher genre.
Before I talk about the film's reliance on slasher genre tropes, I want to discuss one aspect of the ill fated sex scene. As the sequence begins, the women, already in skimpy swimsuits, disrobe first, and while the camera is not shy about exploring their bodies, the men's nude bodies are mostly cropped out of frame or shown in quick flashes from the side or back. This seemed perfectly in keeping with how sex is traditionally depicted on film, especially in horror and related genres. Once the death occurs, though, the men are shot fully nude, from the front, with no quick cuts. The men are rendered impotent and vulnerable, their flaccid penises and plainly viewable bodies the onscreen signifiers of their loss of control. It's an effective device, but I have to remind myself that Donkey Punch is a UK import, and male nudity doesn't cause a stir in the UK like it does in the U.S.
Donkey Punch's biggest nod to the slasher genre is the presence of a final girl. It is obvious from the beginning who our final girl will be. She's the one who is reluctant to board the yacht. She's the one who hesitates to ingest drugs, and she doesn't want to go below deck for sexy times. But before our final girl can retaliate, she (and the other surviving female) must first endure attacks, and in Donkey Punch this comes in the form of sexual shaming. When the women insist that they must call the police and explain the accidental death of their friend, the men dissuade the women by making them feel shameful about the things they've done aboard the yacht. "Do you want to tell her mom what she was doing when she died?" one of them asks. Repeatedly the men imply or state outright that authorities won't believe the women because they were using drugs and having sex with men they'd just met. Silencing through intimidation and shaming is a tactic often employed by sexual predators. Never is it hinted that the men should feel shame about their drug use or casual sexual activity.
Now about that retaliatory violence. The violence perpetrated by the men is mostly of the manipulative psychological variety (though the threat of physical violence is very real), so it comes as more of shock when the ladies begin wielding sharp objects. In true slasher fashion, the bad guys' bodies are penetrated with a variety of weapons: a knife, a flare (ouch), boat propellers. What is interesting is that in the end, when the final girl faces off with the baddest of the bad guys, she uses a noose to kill him. Not a knife or a gun, but a noose. If most weapons are phallic, does the circle of the noose represent a kind of feminine violence? Maybe, but ultimately it doesn't mean anything different for our final girl. She ropes the bad guy and shoots a flare into the sky (an obvious metaphor for sexual climax), the camera lingering on her bloodied face.
FFFF score: 6.3/10
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