Resurrection County

Matt Zettell

BY Robert BellPublished Sep 22, 2010

It's not a surprise that horror cinema is typically linked with Conservative thinking and Judeo-Christian morality, often limiting its analogous purpose to Christian vengeance or sociopathic punishment rituals. Ostensibly, the thought process in a film like Resurrection County - yet another in a seemingly endless series of American gothic gore-fests preaching the dangers of unmanned traditional backwoods territory to smug Liberal teens - is that of a black and white world. Since it's hard to imagine there being much of a social purpose in someone making a movie about two couples being chased, molested, mutilated and slaughtered by the religious right, the assumption is that of antiquated male entitlement and anxieties about rights being granted to people of different ethnicities and sexual orientation. It's terrifying not for the blasé on-screen handling of rape and slow motion violence, but for the appeal it has to uneducated boys that feel right about things they're incapable of perceiving outside of their immediate needs. This particular redneck slaughter-fest is almost a competently made film, with acting bordering on passable and some of the cinematography standing out as professional, but it's still essentially a psychologically imbalanced fantasy evolving from an inherent inability to perceive those of difference as human beings. Those being punished in the film are a young, unmarried couple with a baby on the way, or a "bastard," if you will. American flags hang everywhere they go and a preacher talks of a corrupt government stepping away from the ways of the church. Most of the kill scenes are overly protracted, involving repeated blows to the head, which suggests an intense pleasure in the act of punishment. It's not fire extinguisher, Irréversible gratuitous, but one can only assume this has more to do with budgetary constraints than a concern over exploiting human suffering. Surely someone out there will find arousal when a redneck repeatedly kicks a woman in the side, forces her to take off her top and then shoves a gun in her mouth, holding it provocatively by his groin. But I am not that person.
(Mongrel Media)

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