Reese Eveneshen

(On Cable TV, November 2020) Watching For the Sake of Vicious, I’m reminded of the old complaint against a certain kind of Canadian cinema—that most of it was “kitchen table drama,” in which the low budget and limited ambitions led to stories of low-stake family struggles revolving around the kitchen table. Well, For the Sake of Vicious does spend about half of its duration in the cramped kitchen of a small affordable house, but it’s anything but sedate: The first half has a nurse coming back home and finding two men, one of them clearly intent on torturing the other. As the story unspools, we understand that the torturer is seeking revenge for the rape of his daughter, and that the bound one is an influential real-estate mogul. Much of this first half is an unnerving game between three people, as the nurse wants to make sure that the bound man is guilty of what the other charges. But the film shifts in an entirely different gear once the bound man calls for help, and waves of intruders converge on the kitchen where everything is taking place, intent on leaving no survivors. But then our characters fight back… in a relentless half-hour of bone-crunching, knife-stabbing and head-blasting violence. Tightly directed by Reese Eveneshen and Gabriel Carrer, For the Sake of Vicious ends up being an exemplary piece of how thrilling a low budget can be. I could have used a few wider shots from time to time, but the bloody violence doesn’t let up for quite a while, and even I—who don’t usually like either home-invasion movies or that degree of gore—can’t help but be somewhat impressed by the results. Lora Burke is quite good as the audience stand-in, trying to mediate the violence around her even as it spins out of her control. The story gets thin once the second half begins, and I can’t help but see a Drive reference or two in the subsequent aesthetics, but For the Sake of Vicious ends up being a mean and effective piece of low-budget Canadian genre entertainment.