The Seasoning
House is a film with a premise that never quite pans out in a satisfactory
manner, although it delivers all that it promises in terms of vengeance. The
problem with revenge thrillers is the success that others have had in the genre
in the past decade or so. There have been quite a few of them, and since the
1970s with Wes Craven’s The Last House on the Left (1972) and the cult hit I
Spit on Your Grave no sub-genre seems more determined to push the limits of
violent revenge. Unfortunately, there is little memorable about the methods of
revenge in The Seasoning House, making for a surprisingly tame tale of
vengeance.
The other
difficulty I had with The Seasoning House
was the real-life scenario which sets the film up. A young deaf mute girl named
Angel (Rosie Day) is ripped from her home during the war in the Balkans and
taken to a house where young kidnapped girls are forced into prostitution for
any passing military personnel. The saving grace for the film’s narrative is
also the most unbelievable aspect of the story when Angel is never prostituted.
Somehow her disabilities make her better suited for maid-like duties, which
seems strange considering how much communication is key to her job in
comparison to the jobs of the other girls in the house.
The storyline
doesn’t give Angel reason for revenge by the things done to her as much as the
things that are done to the girls she considers friends. When one is being hurt
by a visitor, Angel takes matters into her own hand. Able to make her way
quietly through the crawlspace in house, Angel enacts a careful revenge against
the men in the house.
The Blu-ray
release includes a making-of featurette as well as a trailer.
Entertainment Value:
5/10
Quality of
Filmmaking: 6/10
Historical
Significance: 3/10
Disc Features: 4/10
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