[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]While we all love a box-office action-packed movie that cost millions to make, smaller budgeted films are near and dear to my heart. The simple story, the limited sets, and unknown actors can make for some of the most authentic storytelling, rather than relying on special effects and clichés.
Some of my favorite movies include One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and Girl, Interrupted. If you can see the pattern, I clearly enjoy films taking place within mental asylums. That’s what drew me to take a look at the 2014 Canadian film, Cruel and Unusual. Taking only 15 days to shoot, the filming took place in British Columbia and the “mental hospital” scenes were shot in a decommissioned building at Riverview Hospital.
The film primarily focuses on Edgar (David Richmond-Peck), a middle-aged “average” man, who ends up in a strange mental hospital after accidentally killing his wife, Maylon (Bernadette Saquibal). We quickly find out that this is no ordering asylum, rather a hell that people go to once they’ve killed someone to come to grips with what they’ve done. And this isn’t just group therapy, each individual is literally forced to relive their crime over and over again, in a maddening, never-ending loop.
Edgar believes there has been some sort of mistake. Maylon’s death was an accident and in fact, we find out Maylon poisoned her husband – so if anything, she should be there, right? From a glance, everything on the surface seems very cut and dry, but as we go throughout the movie, we can see the events that drove Maylon to the point where poisoning the over-bearing Edgar seemed like the only solution for her and her son.
Any time something paranormal is presented in a “normal” setting, it takes the viewer time to adjust, but I don’t feel like it took too much time for us to grasp the concept of this movie. We start out thinking one way about Maylon. That she’s a woman who poisoned her husband to simply get him out of the picture, but as time goes on we see how overbearing and controlling Edgar is. It’s apparent at one point of the film that he took advantage of the fact that his wife is a Filipino immigrant and he even intends on sending her son away to live with an uncle, simply to have her to himself.
While Edgar is trying to grasp the reality of his predicament, we meet some of the other inhabitants of this hellhole. William (Richard Harmon) is a young man who killed his parents in a rage, Julien (Michael Eklund) drowned his three children in a drunken attempt to get back at his wife, and Doris (Michelle Harrison) is a woman from the 70s who killed herself. When Edgar questions why someone who committed suicide is stuck with them, Julien explains that her death tortured her children, who had to find their mother hanging from a tree.
While the crimes that some of the attendees make you believe they deserve to relive what they’ve done over and over again, you can see the emotional tole is takes on each person. Each member has to discuss their experience, what they’ve noticed this time, and then relive it again. We see William conjoining his parents’ hands in his latest session, Julien sobbing over his children now that he is experiencing this sober, and Edgar, noticing the little details that drove his wife to poison him.
The second half of the movie is heartbreaking as we go through everyone’s stories and you wonder if the film is just going to continue with this never-ending loop. In an attempt to rewrite history and also give Doris a second chance with her children, Edgar ends up pulling Doris into his room so he can save Maylon. On top of that, he talks Doris out of hanging herself, letting her know that it doesn’t get dark and quiet afterwards. We never really know why Edgar seems to care so much about Doris, but this act in a sense gives Doris a do over, as she’s transported back to her time, with her children.
Edgar takes Doris’s place, hanging himself. This allows Doris a second chance and lets Maylon live a full life with her son, where we see them placing flowers next to the tree with now an elderly Doris. At the end, Julien warns a newcomer in the group to stay away from Edgar, who appears proud of his suicide. This was probably the only really confusing part to me. Did the other members of the group not know who Edgar was due to him rewriting history? Julien and Edgar were essentially “friends” before, so why was he so put off by him now?
One of the reviews I read for this film was by Ken Eisner of The Georgia Straight, who says the movie “lacked humor and tonal variety”. I don’t believe that Cruel & Unusual should have included any humor at all. This is a serious film centered around horrendous crimes and the mental punishment these people have to endure. The movie really forces you to not see everything in black and white, rather to take the time to see every detail. To dive deeper.
Over all, I really enjoyed this film. I liked the unusual and strange atmosphere, while taking this unique approach regarding wat seemed like a metaphor for purgatory. We have to go through the duration of the movie to really get the full picture of the events that happened surround Edgar’s death and our perception of the characters shift as time goes on. For a lower budget film that was filmed in such a short amount of time, Cruel and Unusual delivers a cleaver, thought provoking story with an unique presence and committed acting.[/vc_column_text][vc_video link=”https://youtu.be/MiR7R316N-M”][/vc_column][/vc_row]
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