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Donkey Punch


Director: Oliver Blackburn (2008)
Starring: Jaime Winstone, Nichola Burley, Tom Burke
Find it online: IMDB, Amazon UK, Amazon US

Donkey Punch: Donkey punching involves the male punching the sexual partner in the back of the head during anal or vaginal sex prior to orgasm, to provoke a shock causing the vaginal or anal muscles to contract around the male's penis. (Urban Dictionary)

Setting a precedent for a movie adaptation of a sexual practice (porno not withstanding), Donkey Punch AKA Open Water 3: Dopes on a Boat is proof that stupid chavs will always find a way to get themselves killed, wherever they may be.

A grotty little Brit thriller set on a luxury yacht, Donkey Punch has the sort of title that one might expect to see cockney hardman Ray Winstone headlining. As it stands, we get his daughter Jaime instead. Which is probably a good thing, since no-one wants to see Ray Winstone in a bikini. As anyone who saw last year’s Dead Set will know, Jaime is a different sort of Sexy Beast entirely (SEE WHAT I DID THERE).

Rewind a bit. Three chav-tastic young girls ship out to Mallorca, Spain for their holidays. Once there, they meet four lads who invite them to a private party on their slightly stolen luxury yacht. The yacht heads out to sea, drugs and alcohol are imbibed, and it all gets a bit porno. Accidents happen, and someone ends up dead. The group splits up into a battle of the sexes and mucho grisly violence and high-pitched screaming reigns supreme for the next hour or so.

Donkey Punch is a film of two halves. Like Hostel, the first half follows the kids as they get wasted, couple off and get laid. Like Hostel, it’s also a little bit boring and the protagonists come across as stupid, spoilt and annoying. There’s a sexy interlude (read: lots of nudity and shagging) and then the genre switches from Hollyoaks: after Dark to something more akin to The Hole, except more good.

And thankfully, that nasty stuff is worth the wait. Once the action kicks off, Donkey Punch is gruesome, inventive and even a little bit original. Kudos to the filmmakers, who manage to make the second half less predictable than it ought to be, and drawing a decent bit of tension from the kids’ predicament.

Whilst most of the characters are irritating as fuck, the young actors and actresses make it work. Jaime Winstone is duly excellent, as is lead girl Nichola Burley. Tom Burke is sleazy and horrible (think a younger, low-rent Tom Hardy) but there’s a nice bit of schadenfreude to his comeuppance, and he has the intensity to make the character engaging and funny. The rest of the kids do a fine job too, making Donkey Punch less horrible than your average spoilt-brats-in-peril flick.



4/5 screaming Scream Queens!!!

2 comments:

  1. I've been waiting to hear about this one - thanks for reviewing. The title is a turn-off, but the movie actually sounds like my kind of thing.

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  2. Yeah, I'd definitely reccomend it... much better than the title & synopsis make it sound.

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