The new horror film A Wounded Fawn, out now on Shudder, starts out seeming like it is a story you've heard before. There is a serial killer named Bruce (Josh Ruben) who thinks he has found his next victim. We already saw him brutally murder a woman, Malin Barr’s Kate, in her home, then steal a piece of art that she had just won at an auction. While he is able to put on a friendly face, we can see that Bruce is more than likely to now kill again. He has managed to win over the unsuspecting Meredith (Sarah Lind) and convince her to come to a remote house in the woods for an intimate getaway. Again, this all sounds like it could be rather familiar, though it is very much not. Meredith thinks this will be her chance to get back into dating, but darker forces have already consumed Bruce. However, little does he and we know, there is an entire world of otherworldly chaos that he is about to unleash on himself.
What Is 'A Wounded Fawn' About?
The less you know about the film the better, as the viscerally unsettling, yet unexpectedly enthralling journey is worth going into as cold as you can. Even as it is quite simple in its setting, it makes the most of its premise through the sheer force of its creativity. It is more than a little rough around the edges as the beginning falls into some…let’s just say unnecessarily masturbatory elements that are not nearly as strong as the explosive escalation of events that follows it. Split into acts that appear in red cursive on the screen, the second one is where it really begins to shine. There is a lot to love in just seeing it dive headfirst into a delirious descent into the macabre. It starts out with merely a hint of supernatural elements before immersing us completely in them. Once it hits the halfway mark, it begins to operate on a whole different frequency that dares you to let yourself get lost in it.
What Is the Wrath of the Erinyes?
First premiering at the Tribeca Film Festival, the surreal splatterfest it is all building to is set in motion by a statue of The Wrath of the Erinyes, also known as the Furies, that are beings that originate in Greek mythology and were known for punishing men for their crimes. It is this thematic core which makes the film cathartic fun and a visual feast to behold. Without tipping off any of the specifics, the way the beings manifest themselves are just joyous little creations even as they could rip your face off. Their meaning is blunt, but not in a way that is overwrought. Rather, it is like the film has taken a cinematic hammer to all the rules it was establishing and misdirects what it was laying out. At one point, a character even proceeds to bash another over the head with the statue itself. It folds back in on itself at every turn, tearing apart the fabric of time and space to get into the gory viscera of its beating thematic heart. Even as 2022 has been a rather solid year when it comes to horror, the wacky vibrancy of A Wounded Fawn makes it one that deserves to be experienced in all its sinister splendor.
Revenge Is A Dish Best Served Bloody
While frequently very silly, A Wounded Fawn goes hand-in-hand with the way it breaks apart genre convention in bold and brutal fashion. At times, it feels like it is meant to be a gag that riffs on its mythology elements just as much as it uses them to send everything into madness. There aren’t many films that have the audacity to remake themselves into being more cosmically creepy. That it is able to largely pull off the necessary tonal and thematic shifts makes it a cut above. Sure, there are plenty of films that lean into nightmarish elements in order to create horror imagery. What makes A Wounded Fawn unique is that it really feels like it wants to nerd out with all the aspects of Greek mythology. From key lines of dialogue that get under the skin to the figures that begin to invade the film from all sides, every frame has a real passion to it. Even when it teeters on getting lost in the woods a bit, the payoff to how it incorporates what it finds there makes it worth the wait. It is more than just a ghost story, but a means by which it can play with our expectations for the genre. Literally and figuratively, it is a skull-shattering film that is willing to flaunt the rules that most works of horror are confined by.
This all builds to a climax that is overflowing with practical effects that are lovely to look at. Even as you can clearly see that it is very rudimentary, it gives it almost more of a surreal quality because of how constructed it all looks. As you let all the fantastical and mythological wash over you, it finds a real rhythm to it. In particular, the last several sequences are wondrous to take in. There is a frenetic and mad energy to it as it keeps pushing itself a little bit closer to the edge of oblivion. Even just the way a hand will move or the way the eyes of a specific being will move really capture the imagination. Its unreliability is its strength as you are perpetually kept on your toes about how much all this is the visions of a man who has lost his mind and how much is a true mythological haunting. After all, were myths not just ways that people once made sense of the phenomena occurring around them which they could not yet understand? Who really knows all the strange stuff that could lie beyond our own perception? That A Wounded Fawn leaves the door open on these questions allows the wonder to take hold while still giving us a fantastic final shot that lingers in all its bloody glory.