In most pornography, much of the titillation comes from the thrill of seeing something you’re not meant to see. From the outset, the new horror thriller Porno seems enamored with turning that sensation on its head and finding the fear on the other side of those forbidden desires. Unfortunately, that thematic exploration takes place within an unspectacular vessel.
Porno follows a group of young movie theater employees whose collective urges leave them trapped at work overnight while they’re being hunted by a succubus. There’s a pair of horny ushers we meet playing Peeping Tom on their neighbors fucking with a window open, a newly straight edge projectionist whose devotion to his principles borders on the erotic, their supervisor crushing on her work bestie, despite knowing his secret homosexuality and of course, a strict Christian manager hiding secrets of his own. Also, for some reason, the film is set in the ‘90s, the weekend A League of Their Own opens.
All these subplots come to a head at an after-hours staff screening where they decide to play a mysterious can of film they find hidden in the basement, an artsy and frenetic porno movie with a demon trapped inside the celluloid. From there, “Lillith,” a hot and shape shifting monster played by Katelyn Pearce, hunts each of them, exploiting their inner sinner and setting off chain reaction reveals about each of their respective issues.
The film’s problem is twofold. While the premise is interesting enough, its execution leaves quite a lot to be desired. The characters aren’t memorable and the performances are underwhelming, meaning that all the set-up in the world isn’t enough to get the audience invested in their danger, or even to outright hate them enough to be excited by the prospect of their gory deaths. The entire affair just feels like a perfunctory exploitation flick with just enough sex and violence to attract viewers without doing anything unique enough to hold their attention once they’ve arrived.
The other issue is the premise itself, which feels like someone wrote a movie set at a church camp or something, given how prevalent Christianity is in the narrative and themes. It’s as if someone just transported that script to a movie theater in the 90s, perhaps from personal experience, without altering anything else. It’s borderline strange to imagine this many young people, even in a small town, having such a strict and religious relationship with the guy who tells them how to scoop popcorn. That disunity of content and intent in the storytelling makes the whole movie feels broken somehow, like there was a glaring issue on the page and no one bothered to notice it through the entire filmmaking process.
While it’s clear that the thorny relationship between sex and religion permeates the air, it doesn’t inspire new ideas or striking imagery. Instead, we occasionally see pretty chaste images of breasts, some minor vulgar word-play and one particularly egregious scene of a man having his penis wrapped in a tourniquet after the succubus makes his testicles explode using demon powers. That little bit of business encapsulates everything lacking in Porno. A big, graphic set piece designed to shock and bewilder that nonetheless leaves the viewer feeling numb and bored. “Oh, a bloody dick. Neat.” The film is little more than a feint at digging into the guts of what drives our collective desires, only to settle at surface level signifiers of smut without substance or incident. A horror movie called Porno shouldn’t be this difficult to pull off.
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