It’s been about ten years since I’ve seen Josh C. Waller’s feature debut, Raze, when it came out. The film landed on my radar during my first year with a website and I did quite a bit of press for it seeing as it fell under my purview for the talent at hand and the given subject matter – a story where dozens of women are taken, trapped and imprisoned into an unending underground hell full of death matches until there is one survivor. I couldn’t wait for this film to come out, and I think it’s equally exciting that this film is getting some extenuating festival hype by way of Fantastic Fest for the kind of genre crowdpleaser it aims to be.
Indeed, the casting of Zoë Bell augments the film’s profile some with a stuntwoman taking the mantle with a lead role after more than ten years pursuant in multiple facets of entertainment. Here, we find the Death Proof and Bitch Fight actress (and present director in the making) in the role of Sabrina, where it isn’t long until she’s thrust into the fight pit with her latest opponent. We also learn that she happens to be one of the remaining half of the initial fifty captives imprisoned by the rich, affluent and equally sociopathic couple, Elizabeth and Joseph (Sherilyn Fenn and Doug Jones) for the sole purpose of fighting one another to win, and ultimately keep their surveiled families alive.
Much of the story in Raze is ado with the mostly unwitting participants delving into their back stories with one another, in addition to desperately sifting for ideas on finding a way out. At times though, this concept of the script feels often circular and a little myopic for a contained thriller, leaving little for the characters to go off of until the action starts and other characters and interactions ensue. It’s these exchanges that certainly sustain viewer interest when needed, particularly with moments featuring characters like the dogged prison ward, Kurtz (Bruce Thomas). There’s also fellow prisoners Teresa (Tracie Thoms), Cody (Bailey Anne Borders) the latter whose impressionable appearance seems less so when her more pilant instincts kick in, as well as the sadistic Phoebe (Rebecca Marshall) whose sadistic fascination with Sabrina becomes foundational to the rest of the film’s development.
The fight fare in this movie is as brutal and gory as fans of fight-filled horror can expect. Synaptic shots of heads getting crushed by either fists, feet or weapons are par for the course here, next to the apt action performances by all of the cast with sequences by James Young and Sam Hargrave. The story does take some time to piece together a majority of its parts, although by the third act, what is left unacknowledged between Sabrina and another key character she fights at the end is left suggestive to the minds of the audience, and it kind of overcasts the more resonant messaging of the film for anyone who hasn’t suspended disbelief by then.
That conclusive missive has a few parts to it in its construction from all that happens in the movie; There are moments in the film that speak to aspects of life that pertain to how someone never really knows how strong they are until being strong is all they have left, or how the inevitability of death is less important than living for the now. The ending in Raze is certainly as dark as you might forsee if you follow horror enough from an almost fatalistic standpoint, although again, it’s entirely up to you to measure how much poetry is worth gauging against the cataclysmic finish Waller tops off with his freshman outing.
Raze was reviewed for the 19th edition of Fantastic Fest. The film was acquired in 2013 by IFC Midnight for distribution and is currently available wherever movies are sold.