No, this isn’t Bored to Death, Jason Schwartzman’s beloved comedy series on HBO. Far from it. While watching Beaten to Death, be prepared to wince, shield your eyes, and cry out in secondhand pain. With such an explicit film title, you might be able to guess just what happens to the lead character throughout the frightening Australian film’s tight duration. It seems to drag on, however, given the hard-to-watch gory sequences that overrun this B-movie from co-writer and director Sam Curtain. We’re often begging for a glimmer of hope or even comic relief, but you’ve been warned here that it doesn’t exactly come.
Stranded and Beaten to Death
Beaten to Death kicks off in a sort of Tarantino fashion (with the hard R-rated violence to match), using a foreshadowed scene of our fallen hero Jack (Thomas Roach) stumbling through a field with a battered face and body. Then it cuts back to 48 hours earlier, and we slowly but surely find out why.
In a sort of drug deal gone wrong, Jack gets beaten to a pulp while his now-dead wife lies nearby in a farmhouse out in the middle of nowhere. From there, he encounters one local after another, mistakenly thinking they’re here to help. Beaten to Death ultimately becomes a twisted game of cat and mouse that might prompt theater walkouts thanks to its ultraviolent moments — which come pretty often, mind you.
Sure, there’s the occasional flashback to happier times; for example, Jack is temporarily “rescued” by a local named Ned (David Tracy, terrifying) in a pickup truck that’s blasting country music early on. Coincidentally, the song is one that Jack’s wife, Rachel (Nicole Tudor), used to play at a local bar and is why Jack began falling in love with her in the first place.
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But then, it’s back to the brutality, as one countryman after another crosses paths with the “beaten” Jack. The drug dealer who started this epic cat-and-mouse game calls Jack a “headshot,” referring to his type of suits who may or may not be able to hack it in the real world; if they don’t, they might take a self-inflicted “headshot” to opt out. Jack escapes this man’s clutches by the miracle of a broken beer bottle he fashions as a last-minute weapon. But the movie — which is captured in a high-contrast and slightly desaturated look that somewhat resembles that of the Prime Video series The Boys — refuses to let Jack find solace literally anywhere.
Utter Hopeless Brutality
Welcome Villain Films
One could say Beaten to Death is sort of like Jack’s epic apology tour. As it turns out, each local he faces is connected to the last, so Jack is often muttering “I’m sorry” or “I made a mistake” to whoever is crushing him to a pulp. It’s a bit jarring, though, seeing a virtually innocent man apologize, though it’s clear he sees it as his only way to survive.
He apologizes to the drug dealer (Justan Wagner), though the fact that he didn’t have the necessary funds initially to acquire the drugs desired doesn’t exactly warrant a double-murder attempt (Jack and his wife). Then, Ned (Tracy) goes after him and literally blinds him as ruthless punishment for killing his brother, aka the drug dealer — but Jack only did the deed in self-defense. “Eye for an eye,” says Ned.
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Following this hard-to-watch sequence, Jack continues to drift in and out of consciousness, fantasizing about a rescue that never comes. At one point, he’s tempted to take his own life, but can’t bring himself to do it. Ned even makes the blinded Jack dig his own grave for him and Rachel’s corpses. And it’s not just the utterly brutal violence and oppressive sense of doomed nihilism that will make you wince; every village psycho in this tale weaves a tapestry of obscenity in terms of expletives. Every other word is a nasty four letters and becomes repetitive and a bit hard to tolerate over time, but it certainly helps to achieve the hopelessly nasty nature that surrounds Jack during his survival quest.
At the end of the day, the main strength of Beaten to Death is Thomas Roach’s committed turn as Jack. It’s a simple predicament he’s stuck in, with a takeaway message perhaps as direct as, “don’t do drugs.” The third act is basically the blinded Jack wandering through the countryside, and it drags on for so long that we become hopeful that he’ll see the light of day once again, in some form or another.
But it’s a savage journey with no end in sight, and ultimately no sight at all. That’s not to say director Sam Curtain ldoesn’t have a confident visual style to help tell his story. It’ll be interesting to see his next feature; hopefully it’s a bit brighter than Beaten to Death, or with a little more meaning to the meanness.
From Welcome Villain Films, Beaten to Death is now playing in theaters.
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