Earlier tonight I watched an extremely unusual Australian horror movie entitled Needle whose DVD I'd purchased back on 14 August 2019 at my local market but which had stayed unviewed by me until now.
Directed by John V. Soto, and released by Lionsgate in 2010, Needle certainly has a very novel premise: archaeology student Ben Rutherford (played by Michael Dorman) inherits a strange, 18th-Century mechanical box called Le Vaudou Mort (or V.M. for brevity hereafter) from his late father Samuel, who collected antiquities. Unbeknownst to Ben (but only too well known to his villainous father, as we subsequently discover!), however, it had been specifically created to be used for exacting terrible revenge upon anyone whom its user so chooses.
SPOILER ALERT – if you don't want to learn any more of this film's plot, read no further!!
The V.R. contains a number of pull-out trays and drawers, each with its own sinister purpose. First of all, a small tray is lifted up, into which a photograph of the intended victim's face is placed before being slotted back down vertically inside the V.R. Then some blood from the user together with some hot molten wax are poured into a hole and surrounding grating on the V.R.'s top surface, after which a handle on the side is turned several times. Finally, a thin tray on the side is pulled out, revealing upon it a small newly-created wax effigy. Whatever the user then does to the effigy (a long sharp needle that can be heated to accomplish this is helpfully provided in a drawer and gives this movie its title) is replicated with horrifying effect in real life upon his/her victim, wherever they may be.
Unfortunately for Ben, the V.M. is stolen from him, as is a photo depicting him with some friends. Then, one by one, his friends meet grisly deaths, because the thief cuts out their faces from the photo and during the course of the movie feeds each one in turn into the V.M. together with blood, wax, etc etc. Let's just say that the long sharp red-hot needle is applied in hideously imaginative ways to the resulting wax effigies.
Into Ben's traumatized life at this point comes his estranged older brother, Marcus (Travis Fimmel). Two years earlier, after a furious argument with Marcus, their father Samuel had driven off in a rage and was killed in a car crash. Ever since then, Ben has blamed Marcus for his death, and they have not met up with each other, until now.
Marcus is a crime-scene photographer employed by the local police, who sees at first-hand what is eventually revealed to be the gruesome work of the V.M. upon Ben's friends, because he has to take pictures of their bloodied, mutilated remains for forensic records. Despite Ben's initial distaste at Marcus's reappearance in his life, the two brothers draw closer as they covertly work together to uncover how Ben's friends are being killed and by whom, and are massively shocked on all counts when in the movie's climax they finally do.
The question now is: will they survive their deadly encounter with said murderer? It turns out that the latter is wreaking merciless revenge upon them (but Ben in particular, causing him pain and fear by deliberately killing his friends first, one by one) for being the sons of Samuel Rutherford. This is because he was the man who 10 years previously had used the V.M. on the murderer's own father (an equally unscrupulous rival collector) when the murderer was then only a child, a child who together with his/her mother had helplessly watched his/her father's hideous death.
This sight was so horrifying that it in turn had rendered the child's mother insane from the shock, confining her ever afterwards to a mental asylum, with the effectively-orphaned child subsequently suffering years of abuse at foster homes. Now, in the hate-twisted mind of that grownup child-become-murderer, it is finally time to instigate a terrible, fitting payback upon Ben and Marcus for all of this, ensuring that they suffer in full for the sins of their father, by utilising upon them the very same death-dealing device that he had used a decade ago upon the murderer's father.
As might be expected from Needle's plot and its 18 Certificate rating in the UK, there are some gory close-up shots of the various murder victims, but they are not frequent and are of only short duration. The acting is decent, and this movie helped to launch Travis Fimmel in particular to greater heights, as he would go on to star in the hit TV show Vikings. Ditto for Nathaniel Buzolic (who played Ryan, Ben's soon-to-be fatally perforated best friend), as he subsequently appeared in a starring role in three series of another hit TV show, The Vampire Diaries.
Needle is fundamentally a whodunnit-style murder mystery movie, but with the V.M. supplying an engrossing supernatural/fantasy spin on it. Speaking of which: I was a bit slow on the uptake regarding the name of this macabre contraption – it took me a few minutes before I realised that Le Vaudou Mort is French for Voodoo Death (or Death by Voodoo). This makes sense, because its modus operandi's premise is one involving sympathetic magic, which is of course an intrinsic aspect of voodoo.
If your interest is piqued by this movie's memorable storyline, please click here to view an official trailer for Needle on YouTube – unless you suffer from belonephobia, that is, in which case it might be best if you don't!
And to view a complete listing of all of my Shuker In MovieLand blog's other film reviews and articles (each one instantly accessible via a direct clickable link), please click HERE!
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