In a dark and grimy basement, a woman is tied to a chair. Her clothes torn, her body beaten and bruised, she screams in fear. Her captor approaches, his weapon of choice a gas-powered blow torch. Oh me, oh my, this looks like its going to be awesome. How on earth can a movie possibly keep this momentum up? Allow me to enlighten you.
Uncork’d Entertainment is well known for bringing us all manner of celluloid horror nasties, and I’m fortunate enough to have cast my critical eye over a few. The Basement is one of their more recent offerings and trust me, it’s a good one. Directed and written by Brian M Conley, this is his debut feature. He shares credit for the movie with Nathan Ives who he has previously worked with on A Christmas in New York (2016). Sean Decker and Mark Heidelberger assist with writing and producing respectively.
The Basement immediately has the feel of a high-quality indie movie. We start with a familiar scenario in horror of a guy (Cayleb Long) getting tasered whilst at a gas station and then being bundled into the back of a van. He wakes up tied to a chair in a basement, just like the opening scene with the woman. Then a clown appears, which seemed a bit weird, and to be honest I did a little sigh. I thought that Conley and Ives had dropped the ball at this point, but giving them the benefit of the doubt, I persisted. And my reward for this was that I was left feeling foolish for having dared ever doubt them.
For about 20 minutes you’ll be left wondering what the hell is going on, but that’s the point. I don’t want to give away too many spoilers but suffice to say that you are in for an acting masterclass from Jackson Davis (Deserted 2016) as he parades a plethora of characters in this split-personality-serial-killer-torture-flick. Now there will inevitably be similarities drawn between this film and M. Night Shyamalan’s 2016 movie Split and yes, they are similar. But The Basement isn’t just some cheap copy, it is a great movie in its own right, exploring themes that Split daren’t. Conley and Ives tackle childhood rape, parental abuse and murder to name but a few, and do so in a two-man show through the interactions of Davis and Cayleb Long. Davis plays the mentally scarred and traumatized serial killer Bill Anderson, and Long his hapless victim, Craig Owen.
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The main action takes place in a basement, in small scenes where Owen is forced into re-enacting the traumatic events of Anderson’s life as if he were in Anderson’s shoes. Jackson Davis plays the supporting roles ranging from his father, his mother, a policeman, a priest and finally the executioner. Owen soon twigs to what is going on and begins to play along, trying to appeal to the different characters for help, with varying degrees of success. Along the way, we are treated to some absolutely butt-clenching torture scenes. Trust me if you are at all squeamish, then you will find many reasons to go and make a cup of tea. Let me just say ‘teeth’ and ‘fingers’, there, you will know what I mean by the end of the film. And whilst we’re talking about endings, how can I not give a standing ovation for the ending scene, the one in the basement, not the other one. I wondered the whole way through the movie whether Owen would survive. I was left impressed.
When I’m reviewing a movie, I’m looking out for the quality of acting, the strength of the script, the score (which Aaron J Goldstein does an amazing job with), the camera work, the originality, and I also love to be left with some residual fallout – a lingering aftertaste that has in some way made an impact on me. I’ve found that most movies fail to tick all of these boxes, and I have to weigh up the pros against the cons in order to give a fair verdict.
Every now and again though, a movie pops up, almost out of the blue, that makes reviewing it easy. The Basement is, in my humble opinion, a 5-banana movie. Go watch it.
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