British B-grade film

Germaine 2022-07-10 20:49:21

"Misery in the Night" (English) 2007
Director: Don Reed

is a small-budget movie that the British used Hollywood B-movie elements to accumulate. No matter the content or the form, it is completely the same. Violence, gore, conspiracy, filth, eroticism, and the obligatory intelligibility are just as much.
The movie should actually be classified as a thriller. A simple story about a woman in the upper class who was brutally murdered by a mob with her lover at night, and then took revenge. Such revenge stories are the same, very common, and almost represent the film theme of a certain era. However, "The Miserable Encounter in the Night" is indeed somewhat different because it was made by the British Tang Ruide.
For the British, the word gentleman is always the first thing that comes to mind. However, crazy football hooligans and bizarre British rock are subverting the traditional understanding of Great Britain. From the point of view of movies, literary movies and classical movies are traditional signs of the British, and classic works such as "Trainspotting" and "28 Days" are also British brands.
Not long ago, a British copy of the Hollywood horror film "Dark Invasion" was surprising. Some scold, some praise. All because the former sees sensory horror and the latter sees psychological horror. The shock of the film's ending is vastly different from that of a B-horror, and it's no different before the end.
In "Tragic Encounter in the Night", all the details are the usual methods of B-grade films, such as hot men and women, lustful entanglement, brutal rape, guns and ammunition, and violence by violence. As a result, there are indeed a lot of tracking, thrilling, torture and restricted-level shots. These direct pursuit of sensory stimulation keep the film entertaining, and it also clearly reveals a vulgar taste.
This film has the taste of a complete explosion in the oppression of "Straw Dog". But the outbreak of the character has no depth at all, it is very simple and simple. But this kind of taste is very in line with the simple revenge psychology of modern society lacking depth and being aggressive. On the surface, such a movie is really difficult to be elegant. What is clear is that this was deliberately done by the director. If the theme of human nature is more ferocious than monsters in "Dark Invasion", then the human nature in "The Miserable Night" is the same, and more hazy.
While seemingly vulgar, the director is actually planning various human trajectories with good intentions. Mutual seduction between men and women represents some of the characteristics of the middle class, hedonic and supremacy. After the catastrophe, men lose their sexual function due to fear, and women with a stronger sense of identity are brewing the inevitable revenge between classes. The spirits of both are on the verge of collapse.
While promoting the sense of form, the director lightly intervenes in the psychological world of the characters. Although there is no homework in terms of connotation, but through the artistic conception and the cruelty of the image, it clearly shows the dark world view of the film. As a result, revenge appears as a form, and in essence, it exists as a tool to explore human nature.
The audience's thinking must stay on the details of revenge, focusing on how to make sense of the pleasure and hatred, not to mention a female avenger. But this revenge process is extremely simple, but the shock is at the end. The balance between good and evil lies not in the entertainment of a thrilling encounter, but in the heart of man.
The film has always revealed a cold and chilling taste in the dark taste, which is typically hazy like the British weather. This common mood really contains a dark motivation. When revenge succeeds, the woman addresses what the rapist has done to her with a gun instead of pulling the trigger. Everything seems to have calmed down, and the extreme attitude of using violence to suppress violence is changing. The most shocking scene in the film occurs when the revenge mentality is gradually transformed into a human way of dealing with it. When the cowardly male protagonist saw that the things he feared were so vulnerable, he became an unstoppable murderer.
"Misery Night" is actually a typical British taste. Reason always controls sensibility, and sensibility subverts rationality at the last moment. Almost all British films that express dark psychology have this kind of shocking explosiveness. In this regard, the old beauty who advocates freedom is accustomed to stay in sensory stimulation and dilute human psychology. And the British who take rationality as their beauty have a powerful impulse to subvert rationality explosively. Such means of expression can often fully express the dark side of human nature through the strongest stimulation.
Just like the male protagonist in the film, he starts from the sanctimonious state of the first shot, until he finally breaks down and becomes a cruel murderer. The director did not make any masking or symbolic foreshadowing, but naturally let the audience watch the whole picture. The resulting shock greatly strengthens the film's theme of complex social factors such as whether it is reasonable to use violence to suppress violence. The problem with this film's strengthening of violence with violence is that after the violence escalates, it gradually becomes the absurdity of a life-and-death game.
Director Tang Ruide's work was criticized as a small-budget masterpiece, similar to the entry-level work before the big director became famous. The 80-minute run is doubtful if the abridged version has been seen. Audiences must be polarized for such a movie, on the one hand they find it shocking and powerful, on the other hand they feel confounded. The most pitiful is Gillian Anderson. After the perfection of "The X-Files", she actually sees another goodbye in this restricted-level film.

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