Frightfest London 2025: ‘Crushed’ Review
Stars: Steve Oram, May Nattaporn Rawddon, Margaux Dietrich, Christian Ferriera | Written and Directed by Simon Rumley
Written and directed by Simon Rumley (Red, White & Blue), Crushed is a dark, Thailand-set thriller that expands on Pressure, the 2012 short film Rumley created for the horror anthology The ABCs of Death. With echoes of Paul Schrader’s Hardcore (1979), the film explores a crisis of faith and a journey into the depths of human depravity. Needless to say, it’s not an easy watch.
Steve Oram plays Father Daniel, a British priest who lives and works in Bangkok, alongside his Thai wife May (May Nattaporn Rawddon) and their young daughter Olivia (Margaux Dietrich). Things start to go wrong when Olivia’s new kitten goes missing, shortly after a local teenager has shown her a nasty viral video about a kitten getting crushed to death by a woman in high heels.
Plagued by nightmares and terrified that the same thing will happen to “Miss Kitty”, Olivia takes to slipping out of the house and looking for the kitten whenever she can. And when she’s kidnapped by child pornographers (who lure her with cages filled with cute animals), Father Dan and May embark on a desperate race-against-time search for their daughter.
Rumley does a good job of evoking the mean streets of Bangkok, combining almost blindingly bright colours (as if you’ve stepped outside after spending hours indoors) with networks of dark, seedy alleyways and a lively soundtrack of city noise. To that end, there’s a palpable sense of danger, and the audience is constantly on edge for Olivia’s safety, even before she meets the sinister Stanley (Christian Ferriera).
In addition, Rumley has an eye for nasty genre moments (the memorable climax feels like the entire film was reverse-engineered from that moment) and maintains a decent pace throughout. He also uses some neat visual tricks (notably a split-screen effect during a prison interview) and deploys some effectively shaky camerawork, courtesy of cinematographer Wade Muller.
That said, Crushed does have the occasional unintentionally funny moment. For example, Oram’s character is shown watching the kitten-crushing video at least twice, and his expression the second time (general disapproval) doesn’t really change, despite the fact that he’s watching it with his wife and he knows what’s coming. It’s a tiny complaint, but it does take you out of the film, because it doesn’t feel like a real reaction.
On a related note, the performances are something of a mixed bag. Oram is solid, but he never really convinces as a man of faith, and his line readings often feel half-hearted as a result, as if he isn’t really feeling it. Similarly, Rawddon feels very one-note as May, though Margaux Dietrich (awesome stage name) is heart-breakingly sweet as Olivia, and Ferriera is suitably sleazy and despicable as Stanley.
The main problem with Crushed is that you never quite buy the sincerity of the central argument. It never feels like Rumley is actually interested in exploring ideas of forgiveness and the limits of compassion, only in seeing how far it is possible to push a man of faith before he will want violent revenge.
On that note, the idea of revenge, the film is more interesting and complex, because although there is violent retribution, the specifics of that vengeance are problematic, to say the least – does it still count as revenge, if it’s meted out to the wrong person? Crushed doesn’t offer any easy answers, but it also doesn’t feel like it explores that idea with any degree of depth, either.
In short, Crushed is a difficult watch, but the overall lack of sincerity means that the film ultimately falls short of its ambitions, despite Rumley’s evident talent behind the camera. It will also be interesting to see if distributors take a punt on it, given that a film about child pornography and animal abuse isn’t exactly an easy sell.
**½ 2.5/5
Crushed screened at this year’s London Frightfest.
