In that regard, “Violation” is quick to signal that further distress is on the way for the young woman, when seemingly pleasant conversations between the two sisters turn into pressure-cooker exchanges of rivalry about their respective childhoods. But as we would soon learn, this overdue reunion would be the last thing to help Miriam overcome her personal and marital troubles. Still, they make their way toward an isolated cabin deep in the weeds of the Quebec countryside, where Miriam’s tenacious sister Greta (Anna Maguire) happily lives with her confidently charming husband Dylan (Jesse LaVercombe). The couple’s bickering and mutual discomfort suggests there is some sort of trouble in their marriage. After mournful baroque strings of Pergolesi accompanies pastoral sounds and the image of an imposing wolf with its prey - a repeating, and admittedly on-the-nose metaphor for what’s to come - writer-directors Sims-Fewer (also in the role of Miriam) and Mancinelli introduce the viewer to her and spouse Caleb (Obi Abili) in the aforementioned car.
Suffice it to say that among this year’s slim Midnight Madness pickings in the Toronto Film Festival line-up, “Violation” is perhaps the only film that made this virtually-attending critic crave the collective, strangely comforting sighs, screams and jumps of an anxious crowd in a packed theater, one that would perhaps notice the film’s few but decided nods to the controversial 1978 thriller “I Spit On Your Grave” through its stark differences in approach.
What you won’t realize in the hair-raising feature debut by filmmaking duo Madeleine Sims-Fewer and Dusty Mancinelli is just how much worse things will turn out to be than what this signposting might prepare you for.Ī chamber piece with the existential mood of Lars von Trier, as well as a trope-defying revenge thriller with a mounting sense of terror, the dismembering, blood-draining frights of “Violation” - from tense familial grudges to an awful case of sexual assault and gaslighting that leads to brutal vengeance - aren’t easy to shake or describe. You know something terrible is going to happen when the early moments of a film greets you with an obvious reference to “The Shining” - in the case of the time-and-memory-twisting psychological horror “ Violation,” the bird’s-eye view of a lone car, creeping ahead on a narrow road through dense trees, accompanied by a screechy score.
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