Donkey Punch

Introduction

Three girls from Leeds are on holiday in Spain and, when out on the town, meet three lads who are crewing a yacht for the summer. They invite the girls back for drinks and, with their friend and acting skipper, take the boat out to sea, where they swim, take drugs and play music.

When things get intimate, one of the girls dies in a freak accident and, amongst all the finger-pointing, they have to decide what to do. Settling on throwing her overboard, rather than explaining to the authorities, tensions rise, allegiances are formed and broken, and things go from bad to worse.

Video

For expediency and expense, this was shot on digital, which does not look good in the low light scenes, where it lacks definition. The film is in three definite acts, the first takes place during the day and the picture quality is excellent - the mainland (actually South Africa) looks great and the sea extremely clear and inviting.

The filming style is very interesting, shot almost like a documentary at times, the camera roaming around events and letting the characters drive the story.

Audio

As with the video, the sound design is different throughout the sections of the film, with source music dominating the first act, then François-Eudes Chanfrault's excellent score taking over for the rest.

The sound quality is excellent, with crisp dialogue and good use of the surrounds.

The disc caters for the hard of hearing and visually impaired, with English HoH subtitles and an audio descriptive track.

Extra Features

The commentary with director Oliver Blackburn and producer Angus Lamont is dominated by Blackburn, who does a good job, talking around the events on screen, just about steering clear of merely describing what you can see for yourself.

There are three interviews, the first with Jay Taylor and Robert Boulter, the second with Sian Breckin, Nichola Burley and Jaime Winstone, the final one being with Olly Blackburn. These are all EPK material, though they do give away more than you'd want to know before seeing the film. The actors were all asked the same questions and provide similar answers, but the material is revealing and, running at about half an hour in total, is worth a watch.

The Making Of is a misleading description, as it consists predominantly of more interviews and footage from the film.

There are six deleted scenes (one an extended scene), worth looking at, but wisely excised.

There's a storyboard comparison of the flare scene and it shows how closely Blackburn stuck to the plans.

Rounding off is a trailer and 4 TV spots.

Conclusion

Donkey Punch is one of those 'fantasies gone wrong' films, with a seemingly perfect outing taking a horrible turn and plunging the characters into a nightmare. There's a moral issue, with the filmmakers asking 'What would you do?' and it's a question that's quite hard to answer.

This is Oliver Blackburn's first feature and most of the cast are newcomers to films - I only recognised Tom Burke - and they all seem to have recently appeared in either The Bill, Holby City or Goldplated. They are well directed and do a fine job with their characters - each gets the chance to drive a scene and no-one disappoints; you wouldn't know that Sian Breckin was making her acting debut.

This is a film I enjoyed more than I expected to, with some moments of high emotion and you find yourself manipulated into rooting for different people at different points. Though low-budget, there are very good special makeup effects and location shots.

Donkey Punch is well worth checking out and I look forward to Oliver Blackburn's next project.