AFFF log

As nasty as they wanna be
Links: AFFF / imdb

The film starts intriguing, with the full credits of the film at the start, including three title slides mentioning the films and film makers who have inspired the people involved in this film.

I'll never die alone is one of the most gruesome films I have seen this festival, possibly of the last few years. Although it is far from a pleasure to watch, it didn't hit me as hard as for instance Irreversible did. There are two main reasons for this.

First of all, I don't understand why all the characters behave in such an alienated way to shocking events such as finding a person covered in blood, being confronted with rapists, seeing your friends being tortured. The behaviour as portrayed by the characters in the film didn't feel realistic and believable to me, which makes it more difficult to empathize with them.

Second, on a technical level the film was substandard. It was shot on DV, had a lot of shots that were either soft or plain out of focus, some of the shots were really jittery, and the composition felt odd / careless at times.

All and all I wonder if this film really is that much better than the other torture porn films as of late. Maybe this film is less sensational, but it's not as much under the skin as it should be.

Rating: 4