What if “Gossip Girl” suddenly turned into one of those last-hottie-standing slasher films? It might go something like “Donkey Punch,” a thriller whose title remains printable only because the right people probably don’t know that it refers to a violent sex act.
The opening scenes amount to a magazine shoot. The soundtrack throbs with hooky electronica, while Oliver Blackburn, who wrote the film with David Bloom, delivers shots of shaking rumps, tan skin, and the Mediterranean, all shimmering in Mallorcan sunlight.
We follow a trio of ladies, the kind you always see at some nightclubs (tan girls who use pushed-back sunglasses as a headband and go “Wooo!” a lot). The threesome meet three dudes who invite them back to their yacht. They’re all Brits (the girls are from gray old Leeds). Aboard the boat, a fourth boy, Sean (Robert Boulter), appears. So do a few drugs.
Soon this group has hopped off the boat and into the sea, where a discussion of unsanitary sex moves ensues. “What’s in it for the girl?” asks Lisa (Sian Breckin). “Don’t understand the question,” replies Bluey (Tom Burke). Dropping the subject, Lisa just says, “I am hard-core,” puts her lips to a glass pipe, and takes the first hit of something that induces yachtwide horniness: naughty stuff in the master bedroom; talk of feelings and heartache between Sean and Tammi (Nichola Burley) up on the deck.
These are dynamics that promise more interesting developments than what Blackburn’s overly scripted yet undercooked film actually delivers. Anyone looking for a stoned and bikinied update of “L’Avventura,” “Purple Noon,” “Dead Calm,” or other boat-bound chillers will have to settle for “The Real World: Death Yacht.”
The naughtiness turns nasty, the nastiness turns fatal, and the kids gradually turn against each other. The alive-to-dead pecking order is strictly a horror film convention: The soberer and more virginal you are the better your chances.
Nonetheless, it’s neat watching a well-off preppy discover he has a psychotic side or seeing a middle-class party animal find out she has one, too, even if such revelations are never convincing in a way that maintains suspense or manages to shock. It just affords whoever on the film’s crew is in charge of splattering blood a chance to frequently do his or her job.
“Donkey Punch”
R for a scene of strong sexual content involving an aberrant violent act, graphic nudity, violence, language, drug use. 1 hour, 39 minutes. Directed by Oliver Blackburn; written by Blackburn and David Bloom; starring Jay Taylor, Julian Morris, Nichola Burley, Robert Boulter, Sian Breckin. Opens today at Starz FilmCenter.
