Written and Directed by Tony D’Aquino
Starring Airlie Dodds, Linda Ngo, Taylor Ferguson, Ebony Vagulans
Running Time: 1 hour and 22 minutes

by Allison Yakulis

What could be more intense than a young woman being terrorized by a masked madman in the woods? I suppose Tony D’Aquino pondered this question and figured “Hell, let’s make it eight! Each!”

The Furies (2019) has a plot and characters and conflict and everything a movie should have, but honestly, these things pale in comparison to its seductively simple premise. It feels kind of like watching The Purge (2013) or a particularly lengthy (and bloody!) episode of Black Mirror. There is a game afoot. Its rules are doled out piece by piece, keeping your brain buzzing as you try to calculate and recalculate who is dead and who is not and where everyone is and what might happen next given this new information. And then you find out something else, so you rinse and repeat. It’s wickedly gleeful in that way - the game is fair, but losing means a horrible death and sometimes winning comes at a great cost as well.

The Furies is lean - at under an hour and a half (82 minutes) if a scene isn’t developing characters or plot, it’s showing you something gruesome to raise the stakes (or sometimes it’s multitasking!). It doesn’t feel excessively rushed, and it’ll linger on some of the bloody bits to make you squirm (that’s why we’re all here, yes?), but the rapid fire pacing does make the time between a few scenes feel a bit nebulous. Still, it seems like The Furies subscribes to the strategy of “get in, get on with it, and leave them wanting more,” and in my opinion manages this admirably.

From what I’d seen in the trailer and the pull-quotes chosen to hype the movie I was afraid of this being a nauseating gore-fest on the order of the torture-porn sub-genre. I don’t think The Furies goes quite that far though. Honestly, if you can handle the trailer you can probably handle the film. A few things go on for longer and not every exotic kill is shown, but nothing felt out of left field.

In that vein, I did want to applaud the character design and effects. The killers are unique and unsettling, it looks like they took some common masked killer tropes and seasoned them all liberally with some decidedly Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974) flavoring. The kills are impressively rendered and definitely gross. Were it not for artful editing, I’m sure this could’ve easily been too realistic for me to watch, but what is on screen is deftly crafted and triumphant.

It’s no wonder that “death-game” is a popular horror premise* - in creating a unique rule matrix, world-building and conflict almost take care of themselves. A death-game also exploits that psychological urge we have to insert ourselves into a hypothetical situation (“If I were her, I would’ve done this instead”). You may not want to go toe to toe with Freddy or Jason if it feels un-winnable, but a fair playing field is extremely tempting.

The Furies is currently streaming on Shudder (and the streaming service itself is now available as a paid add-on to Amazon Prime, or you can still subscribe to it directly). The film will also be screening at TOHorror Film Fest this month and seeing a limited theatrical release in its home country of Australia November 7th.

*Don’t believe me? An incomplete list: The Most Dangerous Game (1932) (and all further adaptations of the same derived work), The Running Man (1987), Cube (1997), Battle Royale (2000), Saw (2004), The Purge (2013), Truth or Dare (2018), Escape Room (2019).