There are directors who rely on jump scares and fake blood to get under a viewer's skin and those who believe the realistic portrayal of raw violence is more emotionally effective. James Cullen Bressack is one of the latter, and Hate Crime more than proves this. Horror is such a broad genre, and this mashup of a home invasion film and a found footage movie takes perverse pleasure shocking the audience with a level of brutality seldom seen.
The first-ever video-on-demand submission to be refused a certificate by the British Board of Film Classification for the "terrorization, mutilation, physical and sexual abuse and murder of the members of a Jewish family by the Neo-Nazi thugs who invade their home", Hate Crime is sometimes difficult to watch. I have seen most of the well known "banned" films, from a bad VHS copy of Battle Royale, to I Spit on Your Grave, A Serbian Film, and a particularly creepy date in the '80s that involved a bootleg viewing of The Last House on the Left. Hate Crime's realistic, shaky-cam portrayal had a jaded viewer like me peeking through sweaty palms, aghast and distraught.
An innocent Jewish family is celebrating their youngest child's birthday in their new home when their door is smashed in, and three masked, strung out Neo-Nazi's invade their house. This happens in the first five minutes of the movie, and writer-director Bressack spends the rest of the film's 70-minute runtime unleashing a near-constant barrage of horrific images and sounds as this family is destroyed.
That is the plot. There is no need to go further into it. One of the things I disliked about the film was that it went directly for the kill. I don't know these characters yet. They have little depth. Do I even like this family? I sympathize with them because of the torture being inflicted upon them, but that is all. There is a charming scene of the family before the attack that rolls with the end credits, and while I think I understand Bressack's choice to start the terror almost immediately, I would have been much more affected emotionally if I had seen this happy footage at the beginning of the movie instead.
There were also some technical difficulties that come with indie production. The vilest attacker, "Three", played by Ian Roberts, is wearing a mask that makes much of his dialogue unintelligible during the beginning of the movie. Also, one of the rape scenes was so obviously fake it ruined the illusion for me at first, but for the most part, the acting was serviceable to good. I particularly liked "Melissa" (Maggie Wagner), the mother, and Debbie Diesel as daughter "Lindsay", as the only bright light in an awkward bathroom scene, and for giving a glimmer of satisfaction to revenge hungry viewers. The editing looks good when you realize it was mostly shot in real-time on a digital camcorder by the actors in the film.
I did not enjoy Hate Crime. But that is not a bad thing. Anyone who could sit through this extreme horror, torture porn movie and come out with a smile I would worry about. So why am I recommending that if you have the stomach for it you should watch this film? Because James Cullen Bressack ultimately had a lot to say about intolerance, morality, and hate by making this risky movie. There is a moral statement behind all this carnage. You can watch any monster movie, but nothing is scarier than human on human violence, showing the true depravity that can lurk in one of our own kind. Bressack's fearless attempt to examine religious intolerance makes Hate Crime worth a look despite its flaws, and the director himself one to watch in the future of horror.
Patricia Pirillo