The Seasoning House

With the Balkans war as setting this film begins very strong, mostly on the emotional side. In fact the initial scenes describing the terror of war crimes against unprotected and desperate people (mostly women and children) are brutal and tough (but very well done!). However, it's just the context to what is in fact a revenge film and a cat-mouse game. And if here the sides seem to be very disparate (strong military men against one single mute girl…) you know you should never despise your adversary and his weapons for little and inoffensive they might seem… It's a nice film that shows us the cruelty and sadism of wartimes! I score it 7/10.

This film was brutal, graphic, emotional, and shocking in parts. The story was well written, and well acted. Sean Pertwee plays the part of a mean and horrible army officer, and I found myself hating him so much - I put that down to how well he played the part. The main character ("Angel" played by Rosie Day) was also played perfectly, as she doesn't speak a word in the whole movie, so the role relies on her acting ability, which she does so well. Some parts of this film are brutal and gory, but that makes this movie even better as it shows the emotion of the story line, which in my opinion is portrayed perfectly in these scenes. The first 15 minutes of the film set up the plot - and it is pretty confronting. I felt emotions that I haven't felt for a while from watching a film, and with every new scene I was heavily involved and interested to see how it turned out. I have to say this film is one of the best drama/horror movies I've seen in years. I would have to give it a solid 8.5 out of 10. Highly recommend it, just do not have children in the room when watching it.

"The Seasoning House" was really not what I had expected it to be from the movie cover. But I must say that I wasn't sorely disappointed that the movie turned out to be something other than what I had thought it to be.

This movie is brutal, not just visually, but also emotionally. Especially because the movie is shot the way that it is, and it is nicely edited. There is just something very realistic, albeit horrible nonetheless, to this movie, and that is really what makes "The Seasoning House" work out so well.

The story is about a group of young girls brought to a remote house, against their will, where they are forced into servitude and have to perform sexual acts for customers that frequent the house. The mute girl Angel (played by Rosie Day) works the house as a helper, also against her will, when fate brings those who killed her family to the house, and things spiral out of control, as fate deals Angel an unforeseen card.

Now, "The Seasoning House" is a very brutal movie, as I mentioned before. Visually because of the scenes portrayed and the horrors that take place in the house where the girls are kept as slaves, drugged and abused. And emotionally because of the events that unfold in the story, and also because the characters are characters you can relate to and very quickly build up some kind of empathy or antipathy for very quickly.

Director Paul Hyett managed to put together something really unique here, and this is definitely a movie that you need to watch. And once watched, it is most likely a movie that will stick with you for a long time afterwards.

The cast were doing great jobs, although the English language with a pseudo-Eastern European accent wasn't really doing the trick. But it was a minor inconvenience, because the rest of the movie overshadowed this flaw.

"The Seasoning House" is well worth watching, despite it being rather grotesque in its story and imagery. But it just goes to prove that movies doesn't all have to be glamor and happy days...

The Seasoning House of the title is a Balkans Brothel, it's 1996 and young girls are being kidnapped during military attacks and sold to the owner of the Seasoning House. One such girl is Angel, a death and mute sufferer who the house owner takes a shine to and uses her as his assistant. When Angel strikes up a friendship with one of the girls, it is the catalyst for violence unbound.

A thoroughly bleak and distressing viewing experience, but in turn it's also bold and brilliant film making. Debut director Paul Hyett paints a grim portrait of an all too real problem in certain parts of the world, but thankfully he never once lets the material slip into exploitation territory.

The brothel is unsurprisingly an utterly desperate place, rife with squalor and abject misery. The windows are boarded up with crooked pieces of wood, the beds are filthy, the walls stained with years of dirty grime and the after effects of vile human actions. The girls are battered and bruised, chained to the beds and injected with drugs to make them compliant towards anything the human monsters so wish to do to them.

For practically 70 minutes we the viewers are holed up in this awful place along with the girls. Daylight is only briefly glimpsed through the window shards, we can smell the fear along with the dankness, and claustrophobia is rife. Angel (a brilliant Rosie Day) is our conduit as Hyett builds relationships between her and the two other main characters. Viktor (Kevin Howarth) the ruler of this vile kingdom, and inmate Vanya (Dominique Provost-Chalkley), the latter of which is deeply touching and superbly crafted by those involved.

Film then switches in tone after some truly awful scenes have paved the way for what transpires in the final third of the story. This switch to more conventional horror cinema has proved divisive, but the way Angel moves about the house, how she finds fortitude, is fascinating, and she has well and truly earned our utmost support as she seeks to erase some dastardly evil wrongs from history (headed by a suitably scary Sean Pertwee). This is not a cheap rape revenger movie, it's a survivalist horror, and some of the horrors inherent in The Seasoning House are tough to stomach, but necessary to balance the art and the reality. Stunning. 9/10

In the directorial debut of special effects guru Paul Hyatt, young actress Rosie Day plays Angel, a deaf and mute girl who sees her family brutally murdered before she is dragged to the eponymous Seasoning House, where kidnapped girls are forced to into prostitution for soldiers of a bleak and senseless Balkan war. The first half of the film has a very dream-like quality to it, as Angel, who is enslaved to care for the prostituted girls, performs her daily routine of doping the victims, and then cleaning them up after they have suffered the soldiers often disturbingly brutal attentions. Hyatt has said he was heavily influenced by Pan's Labyrinth, and it certainly shows in this half as Angel silently wanders the seasoning house and we glimpse the world as she senses, or more accurately, doesn't sense it. But when ruthless soldier Goran, played by Sean Pertwee, and his men arrive on the scene, the same soldiers responsible for murdering Angel's family, she takes drastic action and the film swerves from darkly depressing, to a taut, tense and brutal game of cat and mouse. Rosie Day does well in the lead role, her character, subdued and distant in the beginning, shows signs of life as she recalls memories of her family, slowly bonds with one of the prostitutes who fortuitously knows sign language, and eventually comes to her aid as she suffers horrifically at the hands of one of Goran's men, the monstrous Ivan, while Goran himself is a fittingly cruel and tenacious main villain. The savage scenes of rape in the first half are offset by the brutal acts of revenge and survival in the second, each accompanied, as you would expect, by some great visual effects, but while the film is engaging throughout and comes to a satisfying conclusion, it felt slightly disjointed and meandered in places. However, that doesn't ever detract from the overall tone of the film, darkly foreboding and laced with a palpable sense of menace, it's a tense and disturbing ride.