Press & Updates

Flavorpill
Cooper Berkmoyer
November 17, 2014

Away from the megaplex and iTunes Top Ten, here are the new movies and music worth checking out this week.

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The Mule (2014)

When word gets around that the co-creator of the hugely popular and extremely twisted Sawseries is putting something together, you’d be excused for thinking that the world was in store for yet another fairly disposable gore fest. In the case of The Mule, though, you’d be wrong. Leigh Whannell’s latest film, co-written with Insidious (2011) actor Angus Sampson, is in fact a very dark comedy about a naive drug mule caught smuggling drugs back to Australia from a trip in Thailand. Locked in a hotel room for several days, the suspect tries to “withhold the evidence” from the authorities (headed up by Hugo Weaving) until they have to let him go, but this soon proves harder than anticipated, especially when the mob (whose drugs he’s, uhhh, retaining) and his worried family get involved. Ok, so watching someone torture himself (in a way) in a hotel room is actually a lot like the Saw series, and the premise is ripe for gross-outs, but The Mule, based on a true story, has a lot more going for it than wincing and blood.