Review: Amber Road

Text © Richard Gary / Indie Horror Films, 2023
Images from the Internet

Amber Road
Directed by B. Luciano Barsuglia
Koa Aloha Media
87 minutes, 2022
www.facebook.com/amberroadmovie
https://koaalohamedia.com/amberroadmovie/
https://amberroadmovie.com

Amber Road, for the purposes of this film, is a Dark Web site where you can order drugs, food, and a host of other things that are technically illegal. But it also has an audience that it caters to who are interested in watching people being tortured and snuffed. Internet torture for hire has been a common theme lately, with the likes of La PetiteMort (2009) and Death Count (2022), among many. Like Hostel (2005), it is merely an excuse to push the envelope on body horror, or what others may call torture porn.

This release is a bit stylized, showing customers making requests (cameos by the likes of Tom Sizemore and Robert LaSardo, both of whom were in the similarly themed Death Count) on what will happen to the captives. And right off the bat, while the film introduces the protagonists (see second paragraph down), it is inter-mixed with scenes of torture, such as involving removal of fingers, which is nicely intercut with someone cutting a hedge using shears: the mundane and the malevolence.

 Rachel Riley

The first couple being tortured during this intro, Mary (Janet Wang) and James (William McNamara), are given a drug to paralyze them, but they can still feel the pain. My question is, why are they bound to a chair, and why do they have ball gags in their mouths if they are immobile (though they easily move their heads and facial expressions do not seem to be affected by the drug)? The perilous mistress of distress is Pauline (Rachel Riley), professionally a mortician we learn early on, who gets pleasure from her “work.”

And speaking of work, our main protagonist is police deputy Emma (Scream Queen Elissa Dowling), whose husband – also a copper – was murdered, is being helped by her brother, Deke (Jed Rowen); meanwhile the nasty Dark Web (sometimes here described as the Deep Web) group is working on the married couple. At the early stage, the two stories flash back and forth. You just know at some point in the storyline, the trains of Emma and Aber Road will meet. But I am still on Act 1.

Elissa Dowling

Eventually, we get to meet the police that are after the Webbers, led by Sherriff Taylor (Vernon Wells), who has nothing to do with Mayberry, or perhaps it is Opie grown up? Yes, there are lots of cameos throughout the film.

When the big reveal comes at the start of Act 3, it will either surprise the hell outta ya, or you will have seen it coming a mile away (I was somewhere between the two). My only issue is I think they gave away the gravy a bit too early in the telling.

The torture parts are actually spaced pretty far apart in the storyline, with lots of dialogue in-between. Do not get me wrong, what we see is gruesome, but I get the feeling some gorehounds are going to get a bit restless. Not only does the gore increase in the third act, but they find places to hurt that I have not seen before, which is – er – refreshing, in an imaginative way.

Jed Rowen

The acting here is great for a low-budgeter, but it is important to remember that most of the cast each has a long history in cinema, so that is hardly surprising. While Dowling is the de facto lead actor (i.e., not cameo), this is totally Riley’s film, as she has the most screen time, and her character is so germane to the violence that occurs.

The effects look good and gross, but I do wish there had been a bit more of it. Sure, it is effective and gooey as bits are snipped away, but there is long gaps between, even if the practical SFX works.

Throughout the film, they employ either a dark filter, or color correction in post-production, which gives the visuals a mostly bluish haze that seems unnecessary. Well, not to this extent, anyway. I understand the practical SFX may look better if it is harder to see, but it gets tiresome after a while, and is employed by too many films these days.

It feels like there is a lot of overlap with the films by Michael Su (who directed Death Count), and those put out by the Cinema Epoch/CineRidge Entertainment group. It is a mix of many of the same actors of the former and style of the latter, which combine to make a low-budget film that is interesting on many levels. It is good to see all these legends in the same film, though none interact together (again, one-day-work cameos), but most seem to be on Zoom, which makes sense in the story. More than a plot of sheer malevolence for the sake of malevolence, this is a tale of greed above all else, even more than, say, revenge.

For reasons I have stated above, this is a between-the-cracks film, in that it may be too mild for the gorehounds and to extreme for the average viewer. But the story works, and in my humble opinion, that is what makes it watchable.

IMBD listing HERE