Romford Horror Festival 2022: ‘Ruthless’ Review
Stars: Cecilia Crossland, Luke Rhodri, Max Dinnen, Taheen Modak, Rachel Partington, Bonnie Baddoo, Stephanie Booth, Micky Dartford, Sam Ellis | Written and Directed by Owen Franklin
You think you’ve seen it before – but you haven’t met Ruth Everly (Cecilia Crossland), a relatively normal twenty-one year old girl… apart from her physiological inability to experience fear! Yes, Ruthless‘ heroine is quite literally fearless.
Ruth heads off with a group of student friends for a break at a remote home in Wales to celebrate the gangs graduation. No phone reception, no internet, no neighbours for miles – it’s their idea of an idyllic getaway. However, the trip takes an ominous turn when they arrive to a grisly warning, and soon the group are disappearing one by one. As Ruth approaches each sinister scenario with unflappable pragmatism she finds herself in a deadly race to uncover the truth behind their unseen aggressor before all of the group are killed…
Talk about subverting expectations. Ruthless takes the concept of the final girl and turns it completely on its head with a protagonist who’s as ruthless and determined, and in this case fearless, as the very killer that stalks them. Nice pun in the title too!
Whilst it gives us a new take on the final girl trope, Ruthless also plays with other horror cliches too. Like many a subversive genre film before it, the film follows the typical tropes of the genre – although setting your typical backwoods horror in the hills and valleys of Wales; with a group of characters that all feel VERY suspicious. The entire lot of them. They argue with each other, they act odd at times, as if writer and director Owen Franklin is giving us as many red herrings as possible.
Franklin also plays with the conventions of the slasher movie in the same way post-modern horror did after Wes Craven’s Scream, even going so far as having a character referencing other films like the classic The Hills Have Eyes (in a brilliant take on the gang finding a pigs head in the front garden) and having a character wake up next to a dead body which felt like, to me, a nod to the likes of April Fools Day and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Where Ruthless differs from slasher movies of old however is that its characters seemingly know the tropes of horror and instead of running scared (to be fair, which they can’t actually do due to their cars being disabled) they arm themselves and fight back. They still spilt up like idiots but these guys at least TRY to do something about this situation instead of just hiding and waiting to be slaughtered! It’s an example of the fine line Owen Franklin walks with Ruthless – both living up to AND subverting the cliches we know, and love, about slasher movies.
But Ruthless is, in the end, all about its protagonist Ruth. Even why ALL this is happening. The fact that she has no fear means she faces down the film’s killer with ease, a killer whose motivations are spurred on by Ruth and their relationship, and she doesn’t stand for any of their sh*t – the usual killers “speech”, where they reveal their motivations, running off Ruth’s shoulders like water off a duck’s back. And because she’s not afraid, she processes all the information about the situation logically, which means she doesn’t play into the killer’s sociopathic hands or play into the typical final girl trope either.
Ultimately, Ruthless suffers from a few production issues in the sound department and has an ending that drags on for a touch too long but none of that detracts from just how good this film is. Plus, any film that sees the killer sat with it heroine discussing what the endgame is rather than actually killing her is well worth a watch in my book; especially when the film further muddies the waters about who’s worse – the killer or victim – by having its protagonist act as ruthless as her antagonist, sacrificing one of her friends to get the evidence she needs to save herself!
****½ 4.5/5
Ruthless screened as part of this year’s Romford Horror Film Festival
