7 Days review (DVD) ★★★

Review by Adam Stephen Kelly
Stars Remy Girard, Claude Legault, Fanny Mallette, Martin Dubreuil, Rose-Marie Coallier, Alexandre Goyette, Dominique Quesnel, Pascale Delhaes, Maxime Bessette | Written by Patrick Senecal
UK Certification 18 | UK RRP £12.99 | DVD Region 2 | Runtime 106 minutes | Directed by Daniel Grou

I love a good revenge story. They're so malleable, especially when told as a sub-genre of horror. Typically I find that the most powerful and effective tales are the simplest – the ones that aren't bogged down by overly-heavy plot intricacies, because, let's face it, the formula for revenge really isn't complicated when, to put it lightly, push comes to shove.

In the French Canadian production 7 Days, adapted from the novel by the same writer, the lives of two parents are turned upside down when their young daughter goes missing and is found dead, having been raped and murdered. With a prime suspect found within just a couple of days after his DNA was matched with what was left on the corpse, the deceased girl's father, a doctor, takes it upon himself to systematically settle the score. Commandeering a prison van containing the suspect, the doctor takes him to an isolated location and, while fuelling his hate and rage with alcohol, proceeds to torture the man for a week as the police connect the dots and desperately try and seek out the vengeful father, before he finishes the job.

With an abundance of grit and general unpleasantness, 7 Days isn't in any way, shape or form a fulfilling movie. It's about as bleak as living in Hiroshima was on August 6, 1945. The scenes at the home of the bereaved parents when they first have to deal with the horror have the colour sucked right out of them. Everything looks far from appealing to the eyes, being so washed out and drained, yet the smooth, crisp cinematography is delectable, so the two combine to create this sterile, grief-stricken home world that houses two adults seemingly cut off from society emotionally. And it's not just the family home that lacks colour – there simply isn't any in the entire film. The cottage in the woods where the torture takes place is darkly lit, and the scenes at the police station are a drab office grey. It's just not a happy movie at all.

The torture is disturbing to some degree, but it all depends on how much realistic violence you've seen in other films, and whether or not you've become somewhat accustomed or desensitised to it. There's no shortage of cries and blood-curdling screams as the prime suspect is stripped naked, urinated on and bashed over the knees with a sledgehammer. The doctor even performs his own kind of maddened surgery on the assumed murderer – there's a lot of pain to be felt and blood to be shed in seven days.

While it suffers from having too slow a pace and a running time that's in need of a sizeable trim, 7 Days is a reasonably effective horror, just don't expect to find that revenge is sweet in this case.

EXTRAS None.

» login or register to post comments