The Furies (2019)

Directed by Tony D’Aquino [Other horror films: N/A]

I feel like The Furies had something going for it, but it wasn’t able to fully use it’s strong points to it’s advantage. While not a movie without merit, I doubt that, in the end, it’ll make much of an impression for many who see it.

Human-hunting-human movies aren’t a new concept (just check out Naked Fear, or Turkey Shoot, or Bloodlust!, or The Most Dangerous Game), but this one managed to throw in a few ideas that at least gave it a little more identity, being how the masked killers (the ‘Beasts’) were sort of supposed to protect one of the kidnapped women (the ‘Beauties’). It’s also Australian, so it has quality accents. At the same time, I don’t really know if this was explained well enough, or really delved into in enough detail to qualify it as that impressive an addition to the sub-genre.

I think that’s my biggest problem, by the way. Certainly this movie knew what it was doing in terms of special effects (which I’ll touch on shortly), but the plot felt like it was missing something. Whether that something has to do with the lack of explanation received or something more, I can’t really pinpoint, but I can say that I felt they could have done more (and the film was only around 82 minutes, which was sort of refreshing, but like I said, maybe adding a little more meat would have been beneficial).

As far as performances go, I don’t think anyone really blew me away. Certainly both Airlie Dodds and Linda Ngo (whose character had some undisclosed anxiety issue or something, it felt like) did well, as did Taylor Ferguson, but no one here stood out that much above the rest. It may just have been the nature of the story, but the actresses and actors here didn’t really do much either way for my experience.

Where the film really nails it is in the special effects. Well, “really nails it” may be a bit of a stretch, as some of these kills (such as a head getting split in half by an ax) looked a bit too CGI, but many of the kills and violence were of decent quality, such as an ax being pushed into a woman’s face, eventually cutting off quite a bit of it, and there’s that throat-slitting toward the end. Someone’s arms get ripped off (this particular piece of violence is off-screen, but we do see the body afterwards), someone’s hand is mostly cut off – I mean, this movie was violent at times. I just wish there was a little more to it than that.

And when all is said and done, that’s probably my take on this Australian movie. The Furies was okay – I didn’t have a bad time watching it or anything. It’s just that I didn’t have a good time watching it, and I really felt that more could have been done with what they had. Below average, but not disastrously so. For a better take on the basic idea, you might want to check out The Hunt, which came out a year later.

6/10