Movie Review by Val Williams from Gamelink
It has been my experience of Pure Taboo‘s efforts that they don’t introduce much to the porn experience in terms of new or innovative sexual techniques, but they do really bring the heat when it comes to psychological tension. if you recall our post about “Fuck Me First Daddy”, you’ll know how we feel about that. If you don’t recall the post, suffice it to say that even though I don’t particularly find my porn-related excitement enhanced by psychological mind-fuckery, I do appreciate it when someone in porn makes the effort to do something more than the bare minimum. Pure Taboo is putting in that effort, and “The Countdown” is one of the products.
“The Countdown” and “Breaking Curfew” play some games – and not fun ones – with nonconsensual sex. If you’re not into it, if that kind of thing triggers you, you might want to stay away from both of these scenes. They are not subtle about crossing the line between what is going to thrill you and what is going to upset you; both of them place women in positions where they have no reasonable choice but to be sexually aggressive or – as far as they know – die. It’s not a pretty look, and in spite of the fact that I just said I like movies where people make an effort, I don’t love the plot of this one. The sex is, as usual, well shot and frantic – the characters are portrayed as being desperate, and they bring it across, as well they should. If the erotic charge imparted by fear is your bag, the evolutions of these terrified women should give you enough juice to get over.
In “The Countdown”, Eliza Jane and Ryan Driller are trapped together in a cage with a timer counting down from twenty-four hours, and they discover that each time they touch each other, they get some kind of reward – pillows, water, food. The conclusion they reach is that the more they touch each other, the more they will be rewarded, and if they end up having sex, they will be freed, which is terribly and obviously wrong; there is no freedom in the offing for them – they are in fact too dumb to live, but at least they will each get to have sex with a hot person before being stuffed in nine separate trash bags and left in various dumpsters around Los Angeles. As they work their way to the sweaty finish, they probably feel like they have solved a puzzle, and it’s nice for them that they’re going to die feeling smart.
In “Breaking Curfew”, Sadie Pop comes home late from a party, misses curfew and ends up getting kidnapped by Seth Gamble, who has already kidnapped Adriana Chechik and has been holding her in a stable for God knows how long. Every day, he comes in to rant and rave about how he kidnaps girls and tortures them and violates them and whatnot, and about how they deserve it because they’ve all ignored him and been such bitches – if you’re an incel, you will recognize a less lucid version of your own spittle-flecked MGTOW flailings, and if you are a serial killer, you will recognize Hollywood’s take on the fantasy-heavy blustering that you spewed to empower yourself before the first time you pushed yourself past that edge. That, of course, is what we are supposed to see in Seth here – a misogynist psycho too impotent to pull the trigger. Sadie and Adriana team up to give him what he thinks he wants, and then something he definitely doesn’t want but deserves – a big rock to the head when he’s sated.
“The Countdown” and “Breaking Curfew” require you to believe that there is empowerment in women seducing their captors, and I suppose there is, but it is important to remember that there is an hour and twenty minutes of women using their bodies – the only things they have left when they’ve been stripped and isolated – to give pleasure to men to avoid death and ten seconds of vengeance; the moral of the story, in other words, is not what you are supposed to take away from this movie.