PopHorror Let's Get Scared
Note: This piece was written during the 2023 WGA and SGA-AFTRA strikes. Without the labor of the writers and actors currently on strike, Beaten to Death being covered here wouldn’t exist.
Outback Horror has a proud lineage which includes titles such as Wolf Creek, Wake in Fright, Storm Warning, and Charlie’s Farm. Using the beautiful but at times deadly outdoor elements found Down Under, each flick provides a sense of extreme isolation. In Sam Curtain’s (Blood Hunt, The Slaughterhouse Killer) Beaten to Death – the latest in Aussie terror – he joins the ranks of providing such a setting for his uber-violent survival tale.
Beaten to Death, co-written by Benjamin Jung-Clarke with Curtain, doesn’t miss a beat in earning its name, either. Within moments of the title card, we are shown a savage bare-knuckled beating of the main character, Jack (Thomas Roach), as his dead wife lay on the floor nearby. One beefy dude is pounding him to a pulp, ready to finish him off when a split-second decision from Jack earns him a reprieve from visiting Death’s door. What he will soon find out though, is that he will wish he were dead.
Limping away and in shock, Jack is lured into a false sense of security by a local bear of a man (perfectly portrayed by David Tracy) he happens to come across and this is where Beaten to Death truly earns a high-five from me (I love gore). Director Sam Curtain ratchets up the violence and unleashes a barrage of torture which includes some spectacular eye trauma that Lucio Fulci himself would be proud of. Danica Hadolt, who was responsible for the makeup FX, did a tremendous job throughout creating some very horrific-looking wounds.
For folks that enjoy their movies with buckets of blood and a generous helping of violence, Beaten to Death should definitely be added to your watchlist, but it should also be added for the exceptional cinematography from Curtain and the profoundly physical and moving performance from Roach. It was exhausting to watch him traverse the rugged terrain in excruciating pain, becoming a shell of who he was. And as the audience, we are left wondering for the majority of the movie, the reasoning behind all of this – and once shown – paired with the nonlinear storytelling, I had conflicted feelings about Jack.
Beaten to Death may ask a lot from some viewers – it is an intensely brutal, blood-soaked death march, but it also has some unexpected moments of pure human emotion that stuck with me.
The film had its premiere at Australia’s A Night of Horror International Film Festival last year with the budding genre studio Welcome Villain Films (Malum and Hunt Her, Killer Her) already snagging North American rights. Beaten to Death hits select U.S. theaters on Friday, September 1st.
Check out the trailer below!
