The Hornet’s Sting and the Hell It’s Caused (2014)

Directed by Dustin Mills [Other horror films: The Puppet Monster Massacre (2010), Zombie A-Hole (2012), Night of the Tentacles (2013), Bath Salt Zombies (2013), Easter Casket (2013), Trashtastic Trailers from the Underground (2013), Skinless (2013), Theatre of the Deranged II (2013, segment ‘PlateFace’), Kill That Bitch (2014), Her Name Was Torment (2014), Snuffet (2014), Applecart (2015), Invalid (2015), Halloween Spookies (2016), Her Name Was Torment 2 (2016), The Hornet’s Disciple and the Scars She Left (2018), Slaughterhouse Slumber Party (2019), Ouija Blood Ritual (2020), RIP: Rest in Pieces (2020), Benny and Steve Almost Die (2020)]

At the time I saw this, IMDb didn’t have a plot for this movie, and only 53 people had rated it. More so, it’s only an hour long. So what I was getting into, I had absolutely no idea.

When I started this film, I didn’t even know for sure I was watching the right thing. The title screen doesn’t pop up until 13 minutes in, and before that, you have an amateur actress being interviewed and then stripped nude and tied up at gunpoint. In fact, for about 50 minutes of this hour-long movie, nudity is present. And I do mean full nudity. Both males and females, though admittedly focusing on females.

The story is simple, once you get past the opening 13 minutes – a photographer named Rose abducts women and men, sexually abuses and tortures them, and sells the photos she takes to clients of hers. Now, that said, while scenes can sometimes be grueling to get through, outright violence is, generally speaking, low. A woman forced to use a pair of scissors to cut into one side of her cheek was about the worst we got (which was filmed in a way to make me cringe, I admit).

This movie isn’t all nudity and sexual abuse, though – there are some cleverly filmed scenes, and in fact, good usage of animation about half-way through the movie. Dustin Mills, the director, certainly has an artistic streak, and while it popped up only a handful of times, they were definitely noticeable. One note, the nudity, while constant, was very rarely titillating, which in a movie like this, I can say is only a positive thing.

The story here isn’t that strong, and delving into our characters, the few there are, isn’t really done, so it’s sort of hard to get a good feel for them. It’s for that reason why the ending could come across as slightly controversial (in a movie filled of sexual abuse and torture, it’s the ending I find controversial – ironic, I know). For an extremely low budget film, I think that this did what it was trying to do, but it’s just not my type of thing. Artistic scenes really helped out out though.

6/10