Xpiation (2017) by Domiziano Cristopharo


Director: Domiziano Cristopharo
Year: 2017
Country: Italy
Alternate Titles: N/A
Genre: Torture Slasher; Exploitation

Plot:
Waking up in a dirty hallway together, a strange woman prods a drug-addict man to relentlessly beat and torture a bound victim with all manner of graphic and brutal means in order to offer a form of religious penance the bound man inflicted upon them.

Review:

This was a rather brutal and vicious Torture Porn effort. The constant and extremely unpleasant means through which this goes about focusing on this extremity with a relentless attitude featuring not just brutal in concept but also execution series of tortures that only increase as the film goes on. From being viciously beaten and pummeled by just straight fists to having their skin rubbed off with steel wool, being sliced at with a knife, getting their fingers broken one at a time, and having a burning hot iron placed against their genitals amongst even other forms of torturous treatment in place here, this is extremely uncomfortable and brutal resulting in a series of tough sequences to sit through. As these sequences are shot with a fantastically chilling and quite realistic sense of realism in their special effects rendering which makes everything feel that much more uncomfortable and makes for an extreme watch all around.

It also doesn't hurt that this one features a bit more story to it than most other entries in the genre. The whole idea of the man and woman coming together to torture the victim the way they do is a bit stronger than it has any right to be, focusing on the wholesale sake of religious punishment and penance that takes on a different meaning once it becomes clear what's going on. That this comes at the end of the film, using the series of flashbacks and memories intercut into the storyline to fill in the gaps not only on why this guy was chosen but also who the two are and what drove them together helps to make the experience a bit more tolerable. While this can be seen as too little too late to matter due to the films' insistence on featuring the cruel, graphic torture throughout here instead, it does go a little way towards helping this one but it's all about how the viewer responds to the torture with this one.


Overview: ***.5/5
A highly uncomfortable and brutal torture porn-style effort, the films' reliance on brutality and torture will be the kind of individual perspective that this one features. Viewers who don't mind this kind of extreme barbarity or are fans of the creative crew will be the most impressed with this one while most others who rely on more mainstream fare rather than this underground type of fare will be turned off by this one.

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