Louisa Warren’s latest film Doctor Carver (aka Conjuring the Plastic Surgeon, aka Conjuring the Demon Plastic Surgeon) finds 24 year old model Tonya (Chelsea Greenwood) on a downward spiral. At the film's outset, Tonya is belittled and sexually assaulted by a particularly foul photographer, on the verge of being dropped by her agent, and is the subject of online ridicule by a social influencer. Believing her lack of success, and the collective kick in the teeth she faces from the fashion industry, stems from the size of her nose, Tonya opts for a nose job after receiving a call from the mysterious ‘Look Perfect’ agency, who are offering free plastic surgery to a handful of women. Of the others chosen, Dina (Julia Quayle) wants liposuction to stop her boyfriend from cheating, Belle (Amanda-Jade Tyler) wants to roll back the years with Botox, and glamour model Peppa (Sofia Lacey) wants bigger boobs. The woman behind the offer, Alexa (Danielle Scott) is no kind hearted Willy Wonka though, and predictably has a sinister motive for luring the women to her cosy, but isolated country house (the same one recently used by Warren in Tooth Fairy: The Last Extraction). The first sign of trouble comes when the women discover they have to turn to the supernatural to make their plastic surgery dreams come true, and are asked to perform a séance in order to summon a demonic plastic surgeon (Zuza Tehanu) from the other side. Resembling Leatherface’s long lost kid sister, the surgeon’s appearance does raise awkward questions as to why the women don’t run for the hills when confronted with a character wearing a bloody apron and who seemingly has a portion of mince meat for a face, let alone actually consider letting it operate on them.
If you’re prepared to overlook this though, Doctor
Carver does boast a pretty decent looking creature, with the make-up job and
costume here being a massive step up from what Warren has had to make do with
in her Leprechaun movies. The scenes involving the demonic plastic surgeon also
benefit from an Argento style lighting scheme, that renders whole rooms in
primary reds and blues, and suggests that Warren’s DP does their shopping at
‘Suspiria R’ Us’.
Warren’s previous film, The Leprechaun’s Rage, lead us down a very silly path indeed, and while there is scope for Doctor Carver to follow suit, this is an altogether darker affair. One that sees Warren tackle themes of online bullying, sexual harassment, body image, botched plastic surgery operations and the rotten underbelly of the fashion industry. At the same time Doctor Carver doesn’t lose sight of the fact that it is fundamentally a horror film, and avoids falling into the modern genre film trap of being a moral lecture first and entertainment a very distant second.
Having cultivated a down to earth, Yorkshire lass
persona in recent Brit horrors, Chelsea Greenwood graduates to likeable leading
lady here, giving her best performance to date, and as an ex-model herself, one
that she was certainly qualified to play. As much as her character, Tonya,
dominates the film, she doesn’t escape the film’s critical eye, especially over
Tonya's willingness to go under the knife, and her naivety in blindly taking
Alexa up on her offer. If anything the film finds its relatable voice of reason
with Tonya’s boyfriend Dan (also the film’s token American character) who
attempts to deter her from having the nose job, particularly as it is so
clearly motivated by a need to fit into an industry that has done nothing but
use and humiliate her. Dan is also smart enough to smell a rat when it comes to
Alexa, and her too good to be true offer of free surgery.
In contrast
to Chrissie Wunna’s character in the recent ‘Curse of Bloody Mary’ who at least
felt remorse over selling out several fellow women to a supernatural figure,
the thoroughly wicked Alexa, seductively attired in a nurse’s outfit, revels in
the sadistic torture and murder that she and her supernatural cohort preside
over. Its sobering to think that the gross-out incidents which befall
characters in this film, be it broken noses, needles wiggled about under the
skin and silicone forced into flesh wounds, are also the same procedures that
have become so socially acceptable for young, and not so young, people to
undergo in real life. Not even the monstrous surgeon can keep from expressing
its disgust at society’s obsession with the body beautiful, telling one victim
“time and time again you silly girls make their breasts bigger and bigger to
match their pay checks” while threatening Tonya’s exploitative agent with “you
deserve your own place in hell”. All in all, its promising start to what is
obviously intended to become a horror franchise, a sequel –set in an old
people’s home- is apparently already in the can.
Doctor Carver is up for free on the V horror
channel, but...and it’s a big but...there is a snag. The version the V channel
have uploaded to Youtube has been heavily cut, removing the majority of the
gore, and rendering several key scenes near incomprehensible. It’s the kind of
excessive editing that you’d hope we’d left behind with the Ferman era BBFC.
Strangely, V have however uploaded the full, uncut version of the film to the
Portuguese version of their Youtube channel (where Warren’s film is known as
‘Carver- Cirurgiao Demonio’) a comparison between the two versions revealing
that nearly four minutes of footage has been exercised from the English language
upload. Presumably the powers that be think that their Portuguese speaking
audience has stronger stomachs than their English speaking counterparts.
Warren’s film is also up on Amazon Prime in the US, but I’m unsure which
version they’ve ended up with.
No comments:
Post a Comment