By MICHAEL GINGOLD
A chiller focusing on a horrific VHS tape can now be seen via a more modern medium.
FLESH OF THE UNFORGIVEN, which we first reported on with exclusive photos here, can now be streamed on Amazon Prime and Apple TV+. It was written and directed by Joe Hollow, who also stars alongside Debbie Rochon, August Kyss, Adriana Uchishiba, John E. McLenachan, Rachel Victoria Stone, Nurse Hatchet and the voice of Debra Lamb. The synopsis: “A novelist with writer’s block, Jack Russo [Hollow], travels to a secluded cabin in the mountains of Quebec with his estranged wife Sienna [Rochon]. His aggressive and impatient agent gives him a 72-hour deadline to complete a treatment for his next best seller. As he lacks inspiration, his agent seemingly sends him a VHS tape to view, thinking this will catapult his imagination. Jack becomes obsessed with this sick and disturbing tape, so much so that he soon gets pulled deeper and deeper into a state of phobia and hallucination until he can no longer identify reality. Sienna tries desperately to pull him back to the real world and focus on his book and their fragile marriage. But her secrets are even more life-altering than the VHS tape as she traverses the boundaries between the mortal realm and the supernatural fray amidst the twisted games played by the Death Dealer and his manipulating legion of demons.”
“With the landscape of distribution continuing to change,” Hollow says, “and streaming being the biggest way to get a movie in front of an audience’s eyes, it was a new world for me. The last few films I had made, it was all about physical media. This time around, I had spoken to quite a few distributors, but in the end went with self-distribution via an aggregator. We will be releasing it physically on disc at some point in the near future.
“The new state of filmmaking has actually become liberating,” he continues. “With self-distribution and streaming as the main avenues, we no longer need traditional gatekeepers to reach audiences. However, marketing and audience-building now falls on our shoulders–but in the indie world, we’ve always had to do it! It was a positive move to self-distribute FLESH, not only financially but also creatively; a number of distributors felt the movie was either not soaked in enough blood and grue, or that it actually might be too triggering for some viewers. At the end of the day, I think it worked out well; I get to share the movie I intended to make with no cuts made. Whatever audience digs it, we made this for you!”
