Even
though I work in book publishing, I don’t know the proper etiquette for
greeting fellow patients of a common shrink. That is how our unnamed man and
woman initially came together, but their memories of the exact time-line differ
significantly. Nonetheless, “He” is determined to give her the justice and
closure she needs, by extracting a confession from her rapist. Getting the
truth out of the man he calls “It” will be harder than he anticipated, but he
will not fail due to a lack of effort in Lou Simon’s 3 (trailer
here), which opens the 2017 New York City Horror Film Festival.
He
was military trained as a medic, so is able to snatch It relatively easily and
keep him alive after their interrogation sessions. Predictably, It protests his
innocence, but She never wavers in her certainty. That is good enough for Him,
even though He is a little unnerved by her insistence he was also a guest at
that fateful party. He knows with absolute certainty they had not yet met, but
he tries to dismiss it as a trick of the memory induced by extreme stress.
Something about their conflicting memories nags at the back of his head, but a
few amputations should help distract him.
All
you who are faint of heart, why don’t you just exit this way now? 3 should not be dismissed as torture
porn, but there is still very definitely torture. Yet, the stuff that will
really unsettle the audience is all psychological in nature. Rather deceptively,
Simon makes viewers think she has tipped her hand almost from the beginning,
but she is really setting up later revelations to come.
Aniela
McGuinness is terrific as She in a quiet, weirdly flaky, ominously manipulative
kind of way. Don’t make a lot of assumptions about her. Likewise, Todd Bruno always
conveys how badly damaged He is, even when he is committing problematic acts of
brutality. Their chemistry together is both eerie and poignant, if such a combination
is ever possible.
