PopHorror Let's Get Scared
Presented as part of the Home Invasion Block of shorts at Brooklyn Horror Film Festival 2019, Meredith Alloway’s short film, Deep Tissue, is an opulent, charged film about the exploration of sensation and the power of human touch.
We open on Liv (Alloway: Mutt 2017) in a motel room, in her underwear, marking her body with lipstick. A man, Sebastian, arrives with a massage table, and the two ready the room and each other for a massage.
To put it bluntly, Sebastian (played with a glistening, smoldering intensity by Peter Vack: M.F.A. 2017 – read our review here) massages Liv, and, after a few moments, begins to bite chunks out of her body. I’m beginning with this because nothing about this warm, bloody, claw-footed bath of a film will ever be as blunt as that synopsis. Deep Tissue understands the tension this seemingly brutal act creates and viscerally takes us out of our bodies and into, respectively, Viv and Sebastian’s.
Viv is first pictured as a portrait of apprehension in the harsh light of the motel bathroom, breathy anxiety and wariness in her eyes. We are manipulated into fear, but for another reason entirely than we think. When the man shows up, we flood the frame with our fear of him, his pristine clothes reminiscent of the killers in Haneke’s Funny Games (1997 – read our retro review here) and the medical whiteness of doctor’s coats. When the violent starts, the film blooms like a dark flower.
It becomes a symphony of sensual manipulation as we feel the man’s teeth, the tear of Viv’s flesh, and, in spite of ourselves, the thrill of her release. For her, and it seems, for him, there’s a mysterious alchemy to this… a rare and unique gold they get from the raw metals of their pain and pleasure. We feel it and know it before we understand it. The cinematography from Justin Hamilton and Alloway’s direction cast a spell on the audience, flooding us with uncanny vicarious thrills as flesh tears and baby oil drips.
The film is a perfect short, presenting a complete experience and an incomplete story. We already imagine Liv’s next appointment with Sebastian, as well as the masseuse’s next appointment down the block. We only spend a brief moment with these characters, but they’re written and shot like real, idealized people in the throes of a passion we can’t help but believe in.
In the Q&A following the short, Alloway expressed doubts about her film being “horror.” There’s merit to that wariness. It feels like judgment, like a label on something as dark and ecstatic as Viv’s desire and the masseuse’s generosity. People may be horrified by the gore, by the visceral, tactile nature of the violence, of the juxtaposition of blood and the boudoir, but that’s not the movie’s problem. Deep Tissue makes a mess, but not all messes are made to be cleaned up. This subjective depiction of the visceral and unnerving is clearly an area of interest of Alloway as anyone who’s seen her Huluween Spin-Class-From-Hell short “Ride” can attest.
It’s startling that Alloway could deliver such a controlled, measured, orchestral vision while acting from such a vulnerable position, but it all works. This is a filmmaker in total control and sure of their skill in front of and behind the camera. To completely exhaust the metaphor, the unconventional intimacy of Viv and her masseuse are massaged into the viewer with each minute of film until we awake from the dream and feel completely at ease. Deep Tissue is coming to VOD this winter and will be making further festival rounds after its powerful showing at the Brooklyn Horror Film Festival.
