Everly movie review (trailer)

It makes Kill Bill and the Saw series mild by comparison and is a totally depraved blood and guts horror show. Joe Lynch’s essay on violence is awash with bullets, bodies and blood when Everly (Salma Hayek), an avenging victim of a sex slavery ring, hits back. She’s been held against her will for four years in a luxury high-rise apartment by Taiko (Hiroyuki Watanabe), a misogynistic psychopathic mob boss. And she’s angry – breathing venom and fire-breathing ferocity.

And, as the violence unfolds, it is difficult to assess whether she is exploiting this excessively cruel exercise in ultra-violence or whether it is exploiting her. Either way it’s an explosive concoction which will turn the stomach.

Not having made a decent film in years, Hayek grabs this opportunity with both hands and reminds filmgoers the 48-year-old actress is still a forceful presence. A side plot involving Everly’s estranged mother and a toddler daughter whom she hasn’t seen in years is injected into the proceedings in an effort to counter-balance the gross nastiness.

In one scene, a character named The Sadist (Togon Igawa) enters her apartment and begins the process of changing her features with acid. He brings along a screaming, half-naked masochist locked in a cage. There is also a vicious attack dog named Bonzai that learns the hard way a grenade is not a bone.

The film has no redeeming features. The script is riddled with holes so big you could drive a bus through it.