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By Andrea Thompson
The 2016 British offering “Prevenge” is a comedy that might just be too dark even for those who prefer their laughs as bleak as possible. In a sense it's...the mother of all comedies.
What can I say? I'm sure Alice Lowe, the director, writer, and star of “Prevenge,” would agree that you just need to get some things out of your system. Ruth, the woman, she plays, certainly does. She's a heavily pregnant woman who lost the father of her child in a climbing accident that wasn't so much an accident as the result of a group decision from the other climbers to literally cut him off to save their own lives.
Given such circumstances, it's hardly a surprise that Ruth decides to take revenge by hunting down and killing the other members of her partner's climbing group. What is a shock is that it isn't her idea, but her unborn daughter's, who speaks to Ruth in a psychotic baby voice to encourage Ruth's murderous deeds throughout “Prevenge.” It's the perfect Halloween watch, with part of the movie even taking place during the holiday. And in a time when the behavior of pregnant women is more monitored than ever, it's refreshing to see a heroine directly take on the motherhood's strict expectations.
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At first, it's not that hard to get behind Ruth's mission. The first people she offs seem pretty deserving, from a creepy pet store owner, and a DJ who talks about how he loves fat girls because they're so open-minded they don't mind what people do to them, then vomits, and kisses her right after. Really, by the end of her time with this dude, I was practically cheering, “Kill this guy!” The fact that he lives with his mother didn't humanize him so much as reveal him to be an even bigger asshole than he seemed, as impossible as it sounds.
By the time Ruth gets to her third victim, a cold-hearted woman who has clearly centered her life around her cutthroat profession, Ruth starts to develop a taste for murder, much to her daughter's glee. Ruth also begins to engage more with her child, with the camera emphasizing their newfound unity in a straight on shot as Ruth converses directly with her looming baby bump.
It's hardly how pregnant women are allowed to act on-screen, and it'll probably make even some of horror's most jaded fans who pride themselves in remaining unfazed by violence rather squeamish to know that Lowe was actually pregnant when shooting “Prevenge” over a scant 11 days. Ruth's wardrobe also undergoes a metamorphosis that begins as subtle, with her outfits changing from that of demurely typical, earthy mom clothes to a style that favors black hoodies as she stalks her various victims.
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And Ruth's victims also get steadily more sympathetic, even human. Ruth's mental state deteriorates further as she works her way through her kill list, then even disposes of a witness (off-screen) who actually came across as a genuinely nice guy. Not that her daughter seems to mind, much to Ruth's annoyance. “Kids these days are really spoiled,” she says, exasperated. “It's like, 'mummy, I want a Playstation! Mummy, I want you to kill that man!'”
And it's not just the murders that are graphic, the methods of which include a castration as well as more classic throat slittings. (Fans of “Game of Thrones” will recognize a few of the victims.) No, “Prevenge” also gives us a birth scene via C-section that includes plenty of blood and viscera. Yet for all that, Lowe is incredibly adept at keeping the laughs coming along with the scares. Don't expect jump scares, or really any kind of flashiness at all, since the scares in “Prevenge” all involve body and psychological horror.
Ruth is the kind of anti-heroine who is truly unique, a woman who isn't driven to extremes by a desire for a child, to protect hers, or from fertility issues. Mothers and motherhood in general have both long been a source of horror in cinema, from “Psycho” to “Rosemary's Baby” to “Black Swan.” In a sense, Ruth is a fusion of both the old and the new. She's terrifying in the ways she represents a permutation of motherhood, but she's also part of a new wave of heroines in which parenthood itself is the ultimate horror, as was the case in films such as “The Babadook,” “Hereditary,” and “Us,” all of which are female-centric and feature flawed, complicated matriarchs. Yet Ruth is unique in how fully she embraces and embodies old and new fears.
