As Abby recovers from a hit and run that left her crippled and her sister dead, she is visited by Luca, a reporter from out of town investigating a series of brutal murders committed by a maniac on a motorcycle. What makes these murders specifically interesting is that the killer appears to be targeting one family, the Sullivans, and anyone associated with them. The Sullivans are an influential family in the city who think they are above the law, and with local police at their beck and call, they are never charged for any crimes they may have committed.
It is the Sullivans who called on Luca to interview Abby, to see if she may know anything about this barbaric bike rider and their bloodthirsty crusade. As the killer’s rampage continues, there is a growing fear that Abby may be one of the next targets after the killer runs out of Sullivans. Which begs the question, who is the real monster?
Local filmmaker Gabriel Carrer (The Demolisher, For The Sake of Vicious) returns with another addition to their growing resume of brutally violent horror thrillers. It seems like every five years, the director needs to exorcise personal demons, or undertake a soulful cleanse, and they do that through these films.
Death Cycle was written by Dave McLeod, producer of Carrer’s 2012 film In The House of Flies, who provides Carrer with their first attempt at a feature-length screenplay. Knowing that they are dipping their toes into the feature-length pool for the first time, it is understandable that the story in Death Cycle comes across as linear and simple.
McLeod gave Carrer a straightforward, forward-motion horror thriller with little complexity. It provides a template by which Carrer gets to ply their trade, delivering unflinchingly violent moments to break up calm but tense discourse between Abby and Luca, and growing unease surrounding the Sullivans and their declining numbers.
Carrer adopts some of the neo-Giallo sensibilities for this one, to go with the story of revenge by a mystery assailant. Other traits that we have come to know the filmmaker by are the use of vibrant colors and, of course, visceral violence. There isn’t as much color as we expected, opting for highlights over drenching scenes with the expected vibrant reds and other hues.
Carrer makes the most of specialty cameras in this production. Whether they be mounted cameras on bikes for POV shots as the killer roams the streets looking for their next victim, or overhead shots by drones that accurately center and track subjects with ease, they allow Carrer to expand perspective and frame their shots well. There is an elevator scene during one of the Sullivan family member deaths where Carrer replicates a closed-circuit camera, which might just be one of my favorite things that Carrer has ever committed to film/tape/digital. It is not how he created this shot, but what happens during it. I found it truly remarkable as it played out. Simple but truly effective, it is not even the most violent part of the action.
This is where Brian Rowe and Desiree van de Laar of Locked in the Cellar Creations are called up with their special effects skills to help deliver some truly gnarly kills. At the beginning of the year, when we first began to introduce readers to this new film, we were given a taste of what was to come—a lot of trauma to the head—a lot. Nary a head escapes unharmed in this one, folks. Bikes, chains, and hunting knives are the killer’s tools of the trade. Stomping, stabbing, and strangling is par for the course.
The conversations between Abby and Luca come across as stiff. That could be at Carrer’s direction since neither wants to reveal their secrets. Near the end, Abby admits that all they want is to leave the past behind. Luca did so by leaving his family, moving to another city, and becoming a reporter. Abby seeks the same by moving on from the tragedy of her sister’s death. For some, that means pulling away from anyone who stirs those memories; for others, it means cutting such people out entirely, and in the case of the Sullivan clan, literally.
McLeod’s first feature-length script gives Carrer a straightforward horror-thriller to work with, marked by tense dialogue, bursts of violence, and touches of neo-Giallo style. The film delivers brutal kills throughout a story about an unwillingness to share secrets and a longing to escape painful pasts, whether by leaving memories behind or cutting ties completely—something the killer takes to a literal extreme with the Sullivan family.