"Innocent Prey" has a couple of marks against it right from the outset. For one thing, it was filmed in 1984 but not released until 1991. How does that happen? It's not like we're dealing with "Begotten" or something like that with genuinely challenging material that people might not want to touch. And here's the other thing: it's never been released on DVD.
Both of these facts add up to one thing: nobody was happy with the way the movie turned out. And who can blame them? There is something fundamentally wrong with the movie's pacing, and direction. Key scenes and vital information are not underlined, so you don't realise what's supposed to be important, you don't feel what you're supposed to feel - you don't even know what you're supposed to know.
The (ridiculous) plot is about a woman who not only catches her husband mid-coitus with a prostitute - she also witnesses him slicing the woman's throat, and all in the one shot.
This shot is a piece of work. Our heroine peeks through the window and can see the naked prost with her husband standing behind her. She can also see into the hotel room's bathroom mirror, which helpfully reflects to give us a view of her butt. Who said this movie was shabbily directed?
So when our heroine - whose name I never picked up - witnesses her husband slicing the poor lady's throat, she freaks out and runs off to Australia, where the movie gets more lost than Burke and Wills did. Why didn't she just go to the police?
I didn't understand much, or anything, about her life in Australia, and certainly didn't understand the ending. We see that there is a pervert with hidden surveillance cameras in all the rooms of the hotel or whatever it is that the lady stays in. But this is communicated so badly to the viewer that I didn't know what to think.
And then it was over.
