Journey into the depraved mind of David Blyth, the bête noire of NZ cinema in a supernatural tale based on Greek mythology. Warning: contains extreme sadism and violence.
A bold comeback from the enfant terrible of New Zealand cinema.
Screened as part of NZIFF 2010
Wound 2010
Wound marks the bold comeback of the enfant terrible of New Zealand cinema. In 1978 David Blyth’s punkish sex-in-the-suburbs debut Angel Mine caused outrage and censorship debates. He later cemented his reputation with a bona fide antipodean horror classic Death Warmed Up. New Zealand has a weak history of transgressive cinema: Wound is the angry by-product of being bored by the utterly predictable banality of our mainstream movies. After years of working in the documentary landscape, Blyth’s lo-fi comeback is a shocking supernatural tale of mental illness, bondage, incest, revenge and explicit graphic violence. A reinterpretation of the Demeter-Persephone myth (mother tries to rescue her child from Hades), it features a vengeful daughter searching for the mother who gave her up for dead after being abused by her own father. A ferocious, brave performance from Kate O’Rourke centres the film as all around spirals into dementia and viscera. — AT