Interesting morning after moments as Jack and Choe reveal they are no strangers to the swap partners, group sex scene. Chloe even brings up the past when she lost her best friend through rumours of Jack having a tryst with her, which he partially denies. Lots going on between these people as drug taking induces blackouts where meals being ordered that are not remembered are found in the room. The caper is when a partially eaten body is found. Cloe and Jack don’t remember what happened. The two have developed a taste for human flesh. The murders, the blackouts, the blood, and the gore get more and more to the front.
Do Not Disturb draws inspiration from the work of transgressive French Director Jean Rollin. The gore is somewhat graphic cannibalism along the lines of Rollin’s Living Dead Girl or La Morte Vivante. Both films are about relationships and unfulfilled sexuality in a world of non-emotion. Chloe is trying to mend Jack as Helene is trying to help Catherine. Chloe and Helene attempt to end and disaster with death screams and a sacrifice that changes the fibre of who they are.
“A cruise into pleasure, gore, blood, and unexpected redemption awaits.”
Like Jean Rollin, who also wrote and directed his own work, John Anslie crafts a film of unique bitterness, yet the horror is in what these people good-naturedly do to each other or allow the other to do to them. The actors have a look of “everyday people.” Drug use and sexuality are plausible without deciding into orchestrated softcore. The dialogue between the leads has tenderness, shifts gear to exasperation manipulation, and finally, resignation between bites.
Do Not Disturb is a modest-budgeted Canadian tale. It is well-acted, written, and directed, making it a twisted film that is well worth a look. The dialogue hits close to home for many people who perhaps have lived a life of never growing up. A cruise into pleasure, gore, blood, and unexpected redemption awaits. All the screaming in the film is not of pleasure, just like Frank Sinatra and Ava Gardner. Check the matching bathroom sinks and champagne bottles in Sinatra’s Palm Springs home.
"…a twisted film that is well worth a look."
