Senseless

Director: Simon Hynd
Year released: 2008

THE CHARGE: Impersonating films like Saw and Hostel and combining it with something even scarier: politics.

THE EVIDENCE: What do you get when you infuse a standard torture porn story with political and socio-economic commentary? Somebody decided to try it out a few years before the 2016 Presidential election made such ideas commonplace, and the result is Senseless.

Eliott Gast works in an economic organization for the US government. He arranges loans to small countries to deliberately put them in debt to the United States, making them easier to manipulate. One night, he’s kidnapped and thrown into what looks like a sparsely furnished studio apartment. His captors later reveal they’re going to punish him for his economic crimes by taking away what he loves most. Since he's a typical American always looking for new sensual experiences, he will gradually lose all five of his senses.

Meanwhile, cameras throughout the apartment are sending a live feed to the internet, and people are paying serious money to watch his fate. Eventually, one of the kidnappers starts showing some empathy, but will it be enough to... ahem... bring our hero back to his senses?

A title like Senseless begs unimaginative critics like myself to call it a senseless waste of time, but in truth it's a pretty competent thriller. It’s decently acted, with former teen heartthrob Jason Behr (from Roswell and Dawson’s Creek) playing against type as the captive financier while Joe Ferrara, looking a lot like a bearded Nicolas Cage, chews up scenery as the lead kidnapper.

Still a better costume than Ghost Rider.

The film's torture scenes are nicely spaced throughout the film and all of them are appropriately grisly. (Cheese grater to the hands for the win!) Simon Hynd’s directing is quite good, making fine use of multiple camera angles and using slo-mo to draw out the tension before each torture is inflicted. It’s an especially remarkable job considering 90% of the movie takes place on a single set.

Unfortunately, the film's politics are about as subtle as a hot soldering iron up the nose, and so is its intended irony. In between episodes of torture, the kidnappers constantly go into long-winded tirades about how the US is greedy and takes advantage of the world. Even the Eliott Gast character gets tired of the bashing after a while, declaring “Yes, I’m evil, I make bad loans, I club sea turtles and baby seals on weekends.” Meanwhile, the kidnappers revel in the money they’re raking in from the online display of their victim’s punishment, which leads them to extend the torture even after their captor has confessed and apologized for his actions on camera.

I make the same face when listening to Nicki Minaj.

There are also too many flashback scenes that add nothing to the main story. We see a young Gast being picked on by bullies, playing the piano and apologizing for stealing from a blind man. We see an older Gast apologize to his wife for a business trip he has to take that ruins a planned weekend together. Thirty minutes into the movie, we even get a flashback montage of everything that happened in the first half hour. It’s all padding that turns a relatively tight 75 minute movie into 90 minutes that occasionally test our patience.

Still, even when Senseless got too heavy-handed and redundant in its approach, I appreciated its effort to bring some intelligence and depth to the typically base torture porn sub-genre. Horror fans should find it satisfying, and viewers who prefer political thrillers might get something out of it as well.


THE VERDICT: Senseless is NOT GUILTY of being a substandard torture-porn clone, but this judge asks that the evidence be presented more succinctly in the future.