Gruesome

(Joshua Cook & Jeffrey Cook, 2006)

Take a look at this description of Gruesome (from the 2006 Leeds International Film Festival brochure - see link below review):

"Doomed to relive her own horrendous murder over and over again, Claire realises that she may never wake up from her nightmare unless she uncovers the truth behind what is happening and why. As a psychopathic killer stalks and murders her everyday, Claire starts to lose her mind and her grip on any kind of reality disappears, leaving her in an unrelentless world of torture. Switchblade Romance meets Groundhog Day with a bit of Hostel thrown in makes this film unmissable with a twist to boot."

Now, I don’t know about you, but the idea of a torture-genre version of Groundhog Day sounds pretty fucking excellent to me. Such a concept could allow for multiple layers of tension as the victim struggles not merely with an immediate ‘escape-or-die’ situation, but also with a deeper, more metaphysical ‘solve-or-relive-the-whole-thing’ mystery. Cashed out in the right way, this concept could make for a seriously twisted horror film. Needless to say, then, I went to see Gruesome with high expectations.
Unfortunately, the Leeds Film Festival’s description of the film is factually inaccurate on two main counts. Firstly, Claire does not relive her own murder over and over. She does get killed a couple of times, but not in the same way. In other words: there is no repetition of a single chain of events (and, therefore, no riffing on permutations and offshoots of that chain) of the kind that made Groundhog Day so ingenius and appealing. Secondly, Claire’s situation can in no way be described as a ‘world of torture’. With the (admirable) exception of one instance of facial skinning (the only part of the film that could possibly justify the phrase ‘a bit of Hostel thrown in’), Gruesome trades in a sparse and watery form of psychological, rather than physical, horror. (Look carefully at the quoted paragraph again and you’ll see that Claire’s situation is actually described as an unrelentless world of torture. Presumably this was supposed to read ‘unrelenting’ or ‘relentless’. The term ‘unrelentless’ is actually quite accurate! A Freudian slip perhaps?)
As for the twist, it’s shit, and if you’ve seen Switchblade Romance (or any of a large number of other films that deploy a similar lame-arse-cop-out-masquerading-as-shocking-twist ending) then you’ll know exactly what sort of nonsense to expect.
(So … as it turns out, the idea of a torture-horror version of Groundhog Day is still very much up-for-grabs. If any screenwriters happen to be reading this ... What are you waiting for?)

Gruesome @ 2006 Leeds International Film Festival website