Director: Matthew A. Brown
MPAA Rating: R
Playing out like a modern-day and decidedly cleaned-up version of Ms. 45, Matthew A. Brown’s Julia opts for a more arthouse approach to the rape-revenge subgenre, excelling in in visuals while also delivering a gruesome and twisted fantasy.
Within the first few moments of its opening sequence, where we see the title character of Julia (Ashley C. Williams) slowly ascending an escalator as the credits appear on screen, it’s immediately evident that this is going to be something different than your typical straight-to-VOD horror dreck.
Before the title card appears on screen, we see the catalyst that sets Julia down her reckless path of revenge, and as you might expect, it’s brutal and difficult to endure. After being brutalized by a group of four men, her life begins to unravel as she attempts to cope with the trauma, missing time at her job as an assistant at a plastic surgery clinic and spending more time at a local watering hole.
One night at the bar, she overhears a group of women talking about a friend who was raped and then became a whole new, empowered person after attending these mysterious therapy sessions. Julia eventually meets a woman named Sadie (Tahyna Tozzi), who facilitates an introduction with this therapist, resulting in a gory wave of violence that forever changes Julia as her dark fantasies boil to the surface.
Taken at face value, it would appear that Julia presents a typical revenge flick, with the heroine exacting revenge on the men who wronged her, only to become a monster herself in the process. Tonally and visually, it plays in a very similar fashion to American Mary, which is certainly not a bad thing.
The interesting thing about this film, however, is that nothing is explicitly defined as reality, and the addition of the strange, cult-like therapy group adds a layer of surrealism that makes us wonder if what we’re witnessing is Julia’s internal coping mechanism or if she’s truly acting on these urges for revenge.
Either way, the film looks gorgeous for the most part, blending bright neon with the shadowy grit of the city, at times looking more like an indie drama than a horror film. Brown relies more heavily on the visuals to tell the story than dialogue, keeping conversations to a minimum and instead pushing the actors, especially Williams, to convey their thoughts and emotions through expressions rather than words.
Julia is a solid feature debut from Brown and while, at times, the film hovers a bit too close to B-movie status, there’s enough here to set it apart from the umpteenth I Spit on Your Grave sequel to make it a worthwhile endeavor if you can handle the grizzly nature of its content.
