Going to Extremes

The 2018 hidden gem, Extremity, provides excellent social commentary on how desensitized we can often be when it comes to all things horror and the macabre. It's also a cautionary tale that backs up the stoic philosophical theory, "everything in moderation." It doesn't end there either, when it shows how there's only so far you can push someone before they hit their breaking point and it comes bubbling up to the surface.
Allison Belle seems as normal as the next girl when we see her driving along a lonely road through the snowy landscapes of Canada. A little fixated on horror culture, but normal. She's been doing her homework on extreme haunts, the kind where subjects submit themselves to physical and psychological torture all for the sake of pushing themselves to their own limits. Allison needs this apparently, and we find that she's become desensitized to blood and gore from watching the darkest and most disturbing horror movies she can, a circumstance that thoroughly creeps out her girlfriend. Early on, Allison is in contact with Perdition, the extreme haunt experience that may finally be able to break her of her traumatizing past. She and Zachary, another participant, are almost immediately abducted, moved, and then subjected to their own disturbing intros into the isolated facility.

Allison and Zachary are moved through the building, the walls and floors covered in black sludge, the windows ushering in neon lights to fill the gloomy interior of the dank building space around them. The entire time Allison is being inducted through the house of horrors, we're introduced to snapshots on her disturbing past, the alluded-to death of the mother, and the physical and sexual abuse she's endured at the hands of her father. Why would someone with such a traumatizing childhood want to subject herself to such tortures of Perdition, as faux as it may be? A Japanese journalist and her sleazy cameraman are on hand for the action, reporting a story about the extreme haunt, and sneaking in clandestine shots of the haunt workers bickering and planning their dark work. Once the victims are released from their restraints, one is subjected to physical torture while the other is forced to watch, and to participate in a morbid sexual fantasy gone wrong. To try and escape, they run loose down the putrid hallways, where haunt workers antagonize them from behind fences, yelling and banging their gongs of psychological abuse.

Allison is subjected to a confined coffin space, triggering her flashbacks to her childhood brutalization by her father. She's also treated to a couple of different types of water torture, the second after defiantly headbutting and breaking the nose of a haunt worker. It's here she's approached and mentally manipulated by ringleader Bob, who moonlights as the masked Red Skull. He's set up the whole experience for Allison, and come to find out, he's done his research on her in preparation for her visit, making the entire experience a little more nefarious than it needed to be. The second water torture is more in line with a watery think tank, with more time for Allison to revisit her past and fuel her chances of snapping completely.

Allison and Zachary are soon taken out into the Canadian wilderness by the duo of the caustic Nell and her transgender sibling, Morgan. Nell yells in Allison's face before releasing them into the snow, offering freedom if they can evade recapture. Their scampering is brutal and cold and riddled with a picturesque brigade of trees that only prove to be their undoing. They are soon brought back to the original point of their escape and held at gunpoint. When Allison taunts Nell, the callous blonde shoves the gun into Allison's hand, commanding her to shoot Zachary. Memories come flooding back as she's prodded, a demonic, female version of Death guides her hand, and Allison sees Zachary as her father before pulling the trigger and throwing Nell and Morgan into a panic.

We soon come to find out that the vision of Death, likened to a grimy, tattooed version of Diana from the horror movie Lights Out, is a leitmotif throughout the movie, one that guides Allison as she slowly descends into the chaos exacerbated by Perdition. This is the best aspect of the movie in my opinion. Death may or may not be a manifestation of Allison's sister, who committed suicide after facing the same abuse as Allison. Allison referred to her mother early on, and we soon see that it's actually her sister who helped raiserher, whom she called her mother. She is cryptically labeled "Death/Allison's Sister" in the end credits. Death is played by model/actress Cam Damage, who slightly resembles the turn-of-the-century Italian muse, the Marchesa Luisa Casati.


Things really spiral out of control when Allison, Nell, and Morgan make it back to the facility to tell Bob what's happened. Come to find out, Zachary isn't really dead, a fact that only subjects Allison to even more psychological terror. As she sees that Zachary is perfectly fine back at the facility, he won't be for long. Allison snaps and lays him to waste with a spiked bat, channeling all the deepest and darkest horror movies she's ever adored. She pummels his head into a pile of slush before finding Bob cowering away in a closet. What she does to him, after stabbing him multiple times with a knife of course, I'll leave to the imagination. Before long, the scariest thing about Perdition is the version of Allison Belle they indirectly groomed to become a callous killer.

The movie is filmed near Winnipeg, Canada, somewhere rural and icy and brutal near the border with Minnesota and Michigan. With little subtlety, it takes on the mantra of extreme haunts, in that once the waiver is signed, you are wholly theirs for the physical and psychological mayhem. Fans of The Houses October Built, The Descent, and the French horror flick High Tension will appreciate the mayhem Extremity dishes out. As I stated, the coolest aspect for me was incarnation of Death that resides in the demented mind of Allison. Death is near and dear to her, in more ways than one, and the only thing creepier than the leitmotif is Allison herself once she goes full-on carnage. Extremity comes to us from the mind of The Last Shift director, Anthony DiBlasi, which only shows that his star is pointing up. The movie is a nice change of pace. It shows that the horrors of the extreme haunt is nothing compared to the horror locked away inside Allison. Once stirred up and reawakened by the Perdition experience, Allison unleashes all her mental restraints, making every single unfriendly face, including that of her sadistic father, pay to