Writer/director Kenneth Perkins’s Velvicide is about a young woman trying to move forward after a terrifying experience, only to realize that telling her story might be just as dangerous as surviving it. The thriller is about Velvet Stevens (Gea Rose Henry), a young woman who survived a kidnapping and is trying to stitch her life back together in the aftermath. With her kidnapper still out there, she agrees to sit for a true-crime documentary directed by Isaac F. (JD Starnes), who wants to dig deeper into Velvet’s story, whether she’s comfortable or not.
Running alongside Velvet’s story is Callum (Jon Devlin), a suicide hotline operator taking calls from people at their breaking point. The problem is, after a recent call he took that ended in a murder-suicide, Callum is determined to make a bigger impact. That drive leads him to call Velvet for a sympathetic ear, but it’s clear he’s crossing a line. As the documentary takes shape, Velvet begins to recount the details of her kidnapping. She’s chained to a safe in the basement of an abandoned home, and her kidnapper comes down wearing a mask made of googly eyes. The kidnapper has only one goal for Velvet: to make her kill herself. One night it’s a blade, the next it’s a bottle of pills, then it’s a hangman’s noose. Each night brings a new method, but Velvet is smart enough not to let herself be persuaded or coerced into doing what he wants.
“The kidnapper has only one goal for Velvet: to make her kill herself.”
In Velvicide, Perkins walks a very thin line surrounding the theme of suicide. I admire the filmmaker’s audacity in taking us, the audience, down a very controversial road and addressing a subject few would dare to broach. As a writer, he did his research, putting us in the shoes of kidnapping victims and their emotional and psychological makeup afterward. Then there are the people who put themselves out there to help the hopeless and the ones eager to exploit these stories for fame and social media clout. Perkins manages to build a horror/thriller around all these heavy themes. Yes, it’s a larger-than-life story with a psychopath trying to inflict as much harm to the mind and body as possible. I’m not one who believes certain topics are taboo for any genre of film. But you can’t do it just to do it. In that regard, Perkins nails the tone and approach.
Henry gives a great performance. She carries the emotional weight of most of the story and shifts along a sliding scale of strength and vulnerability from one situation to the next. It’s complicated, forcing the actor to make emotional changes on a dime, yet she turns in an incredible iie performance. The rest of the cast are clearly having fun as various versions of the villains.
With Velvicide, Perkins takes a volatile subject and turns it into a nasty little thriller. He always keeps the pressure on via the kidnapping horror and its fallout. Anchored by Gea Rose Henry’s raw, constantly shifting performance, the film sticks with you because it’s not just about surviving the basement; it’s about what happens when everyone wants a piece of your story afterward.
"…sticks with you..."
