Genuinely horrific film with post 9/11 resonance

Rating: 7/10 (22 February 2006)

Oddly, I'd been having a conversation with a bloke I met in a pub about Straw Dogs just before I saw this film  and it does have echoes of that film. The gruelling, exhausting horrific scenes that make the audience start to want the protagonists to take revenge; as well as the bespectacled liberal(ish) hero who is driven to violence.
PROPER SPOILERS COMING SOON
Which isn't to say this won't satisfy horror fans. The opening is a refreshing change from the usual slow build-up dynamic we are (sort of) used to scary films employing in their first few minutes. And although there is black humour, this is a proper horror film that doesn't wink at its audience. Most of the deaths are seen as a wrenching events that tear at the fabric of the family we are on a journey with. So there are real seeming consequences to violence - not just a cast who it's fun to see being killed one-by-one.
And there's a political sub-text, for those that want it. In the scene where the protagonist walks through the model village used for nuclear testing, it's like an eerie ghost town - spooky: but we are also reminded, I think, that the brutality we've witnessed in the film could be chicken-feed to the horrors rational governments once considered inflicting on the civilian population of other countries. And there are parallels with more recent events. I don't want to say too much but the film does explore the effects taking revenge has on us; and the notion that we are responsible for creating our enemies. There's a scene where someone finds an inventive use for an American flag that could be read in two very different ways.
Maybe the beers I'd had with the Straw Dogs man made me a soft touch but apart from a few missteps (the last shot punch-line) this was a film worth thinking about.