Crushed, 2025.
Directed by Simon Rumley.
Starring Steve Oram, Margaux Dietrich, May Nattaporn Rawddon, Kevin Lea Davies, Nadech Chatwin, Christian Ferriera, and Jonathan Samson.
SYNOPSIS:
A family’s faith and resilience are tested when their daughter is kidnapped, leading to a harrowing journey of discovery and justice.
There are movies that are designed to shock with gore and violence, and there are movies that are designed to shock with explicit sex, but every so often a movie comes along that hits on a different level, tackling taboo subjects that are usually passed over in favour of a quick jump scare or a gross-out moment. Writer/director Simon Rumley is probably best known for his 2010 movie Red White & Blue, a movie that was applauded for its daring depictions of violence and dark undertones of something more sinister than what is presented on the surface, and in Crushed he brings that darkness back, tackling another subject that is hard to watch.
Father Daniel (Steve Oram) is a Christian priest living in Thailand with his Thai wife May (May Nattaporn Rawddon) and their 10-year-old daughter Olivia (Margaux Dietrich). After receiving a kitten as a birthday gift, Olivia goes for a sleepover at a friend’s house where her friend’s teenage brother Marcus (Nadech Chatwin) shows her a homemade video of a woman stamping on a small kitten.
Naturally distraught, Olivia arrives home looking for her kitten but it is nowhere to be found, so she goes looking and finds the house where the video was made. She goes in and is discovered by Stanley (Christian Ferriera), who establishes that no one knows she is there before picking up the phone and calling Mr. Jeffreys (Jonathan Samson), a rich American who regularly travels to Thailand for ‘pleasure’.
All of this is in the first act and so the majority of what happens next sees Father Daniel and his wife searching for their daughter. With Father Daniel being a man of faith, his Christian beliefs of forgiveness clash not only with his own morals but also with May’s, whose own path is less of a struggle when it comes to what she thinks should be done to the person who kidnapped her daughter. There are a few narrative turns that the story takes, because there wouldn’t be much of a dilemma if the kidnapping and what follows were as straightforward as it appears to the characters in the film, and Simon Rumley combines the nastier aspects with a filmmaking style that puts you right there with the events unfolding, his handheld cameras jerking and moving around to create an unsettling, almost buzzing, atmosphere that doesn’t really slow down, even in its quietest moments.
Performances are all excellent, especially Steve Oram, who really seems to be questioning everything that is happening, his calm line delivery at odds with the pained expressions he shows with each new revelation, his face showing the struggle that Father Daniel is fighting, and young Margaux Dietrich is brilliant as the innocent Olivia, whose questions about life and how terrible people can be are answered in the worst way possible. Credit also to Christian Ferriera as Stanley, who has a journey of his own and also discovers that life is not always fair when it comes to dishing out punishments, and the actor is brilliantly convincing in the final act when he is shown that actions have consequences.
Obviously, Crushed is a very bleak and depressing movie about child sex trafficking and Simon Rumley is very aware of what can be shown and how to show it, with sound effects playing an important part over visuals in some scenes. Jonathan Samson as Mr. Jeffreys doesn’t need to do a lot as – and this is no slight on the actor – he looks and speaks exactly like you would expect a child predator to, so we know what he is capable of without needing to show it (and if you are worried, you don’t see the kittens getting squashed either). The power of suggestion is the greatest tool the filmmakers have here and it works to create something disgusting but also compelling, because we want to see the bad people get what is coming to them.
In Crushed, we do get to see some redemptive violence to satisfy the vigilante mobs with their metaphorical pitchforks, but thanks to some creative writing and the themes of faith and forgiveness versus what is right and wrong, it doesn’t satisfy like the ending of a movie should, leaving you feeling as uncomfortable with the resolution as you are with the subject matter, and that is probably the biggest takeaway from it. You may only watch it once, but Crushed is a movie you won’t easily forget.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★ ★ ★
Chris Ward
