Donkey Punch Exceeds Its Smutty Titling with Workmanlike Thriller

A A A Comments By Nick Pinkerton Wednesday, Jan 21 2009

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Donkey Punch
Directed by Oliver Blackburn
Magnet Releasing
Opens January 23

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The personnel behind Donkey Punch could've released anything with such a "No way" title—if you haven't been on the Internet since 1999, well, ask around—and probably recouped their costs off titillated adolescents trying to slip one past the 'rents. But they made a workmanlike thriller that works as an (unconscious?) auto-critique of mainstreamed Internet-age hedonism—the title presupposes the universal saturation of online schoolyard smuttiness, the film positing a world where nobody thinks twice when the camcorder comes out at the sex party. Three Northern U.K. slags in Mallorca get picked up by some smirky, overconfident lads (all interchangeable), the crew of an available luxury yacht. As they lure the ladies onto open water for "Drinking fine champagne, watching the sunset," former music video director Oliver Blackburn submerges the film into seeing-tracers, pharmaceutical euphoria, the gals flitting about barefoot in slo-mo, sampling substances—until everything jackknifes on an amateur porn mishap. The blog-buzz DJ Kicks pop clicks off, revealing SomethingAwful.com amorality as the movie becomes a Knife in the Water for the era of Ugly Briton, package tour imperialism. (Her Majesty's subjects have gained an unprecedented reputation for painting pristine Mediterranean beaches with upchucked ecstasy and bitters.) The partiers toss their humanity overboard as quickly as you jettisoned Peter Bjorn & John from your iPod, with a resulting boys-against-girls massacre in the ship's cavernous belowdeck. Resourceful use of emergency flares and an outboard motor.

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