Crushed

You are going to get stomped right in the kitten while watching the jet-black shocker Crushed, written and directed by Simon Rumley. Little Olivia (Margaux Dietrich) has gotten a kitten for her birthday from her mother, May (Nattapohn Rawddon), and father, Father Daniel (Steve Oram). They all live in Bangkok, where Daniel leads a congregation. Olivia names her new kitten Missy because she misses the kitten when they are apart. One day, Olivia is shown a video by the older brother of her friend. It is of a woman wearing stockings and a high heel. There is a kitten playing on the floor. After toying with it, the woman stomps on the kitten with her high heels, crushing it dead.

Olivia sits between two women, staring warily at one of them, in Crushed.

“She follows him to where the animals are delivered: the studio where the videos are shot.”

Olivia can’t stop screaming when her parents pick her up. They were in such a hurry to come get her that Daniel left the door open by accident. When they get home, Olivia can’t find Missy. She freaks out, as she is convinced the high-heeled lady in the video will get her kitten. They look for the kitten endlessly. After school, Olivia spies a boy leaving a pet shop with multiple cases. She follows him to where the animals are delivered: the studio where the videos are shot. She breaks open the back window and sneaks in, trying to find her kitten. However, the video maker, Stanley (Christian Ferreira), catches her and realizes no one knows where Olivia is. He ties up the little girl, then gets on the phone to sell her. Soon Mr. Jeffreys (Jonathan Samson) gets on a jet from America to fly to Thailand to play with what he bought.

I keep feeling like I have to review Crushed as some kind of cosmic payback for seeking the most extreme cinema I could find as a brash youth. I even did research papers about shock cinema in college, deep-diving into movies like Meet the Feebles and Nekromantik 2. So even though, in my middle age, I now prefer Westerns and Christmas films, I still must have the mark of the devil on me to pull a film like Crushed. With easily the most nauseating concept I have ever seen, Crushed is the cinematic equivalent of the famous National Lampoon cover that said: “Buy this magazine, or we’ll shoot this dog.” I thought the poster art of the kitten with a high heel poised over its head was a metaphor for child trafficking. I never imagined in a million years that it would be something that literally happens in the movie.