THE VICTIM
2003
WRITER / PRODUCER / DIRECTOR / EDITOR
Duration: 36 minutes
A man awakens to find himself tied naked to a chair in a dark basement. His captors introduce themselves as a duo of deranged sadists who have targeted him at random as their next victim and that he is to be tortured and eventually killed.
Their captive is surprisingly calm considering his predicament and soon reveals himself to be a fugitive on the run for similar crimes. He even offers to join forces with his captors and demostrate his own methods of pain infliction on a fresh victim.
A battle of loyalties ensues between the three men as the victim plays on his captors differences. Is he the psychopath he claims to be or does he have another agenda?
Production notes:
The Victim was Rob Ager's first film project. A cast and crew of over twenty-five volunteers worked on the six day shoot. At 35 mins the film was too long for the short film festival circuit and hence only received a handful of screenings. It's relentlessly dark content also discouraged some festival submission panels.
The main objection has been to a scene in which the lead character (Matthew Benson) repeatedly burns a restrained female victim (Jackie Knowles) with a lit cigarette. The script called for the actual burning to take place off camera to lessen its offensiveness for audiences. However, due to the angle of the shot audiences were accidentally given the impression that the victim was being burned on her genitals. This only added more horror to an already sinister screenplay.
The strength of this film is its gritty realism. although fictional it's content is drawn from extensive research on a subject that is normally misrepresented on film.
Cast
Matthew Benson, Jack Gallagher, Marc Bolton, Jackie Knowles, Lucy hoult, Luke Gardiner