Manhater gives the initial impression that it is another film in the woman takes revenge and carves up men genre alongside the likes of I Spit on Your Grave (1978), Ms 45/Angel of Vengeance (1981), Dirty Weekend (1992) and Baise-Moi (2000). This turns out not to be the case but the title does leave the film with an undeniable expectation as you sit down to watch – I was expecting a nastily sordid tale where a woman takes it into her own hands to level the balance of the sexes but what we end up with instead is a supernatural story about a demon killing off a woman’s ex’s. Certainly, the film captivates interest from the second scene where we meet heroine Emelle, angry at husband John F. Henry turning up late for their evening out, only for him to start aggressively wanting sex and forcing her into a set of ties as he produces a knife and starts cutting her, where the entire scene sits in an ambiguous place between whether it is rape or a bondage scene that she is enjoying.

I had difficulty always trying to grasp where Anthony Doublin was coming from with the film. There are times it sends mixed messages. As far as one can see, Doublin’s sympathies are with heroine Emelle who has been through a string of abusive relationships, which seems a standard set-up for a film where dark force kill them off with a just fate. However, we then learn that she is a dupe in a scheme by her ex-husband and the New Age psychic to set her up so they can control a demon (with the ex having taken up with the same witch that Emelle’s roommate in a wild probability-stretching coincidence just happens to persuade her to go and see for therapy). As a result, the thrust of the film’s sympathies seem to be about setting out to protect the lives of the jerks that have abused the heroine. In a further twist, the film throws in the heroine’s submissive desires – while interestingly different, at no point does the film seem to address these, such as where you can draw a line between enjoying being treated rough and when it becomes genuine abuse. Despite Anthony Doublin’s clear experience as a professional in the film industry, Manhater often plays out like a low-budget amateur-made ingenue effort. This is particularly noticeable in the grainy non-professional photography that has amateur film all over it. Nor does the sight of the demon figure, which is clearly an actress (fetish model and porn actress Ariel X) wearing body paint that fails to disguise a thong while she is supposedly walking around nude, do much to improve things. That said, most of the actors (all unknowns whose name one has never heard of before – another sign of an amateur film) give solid and professional performances. The horror scenes are delivered with a moderate degree of gore. This must also be the first film I have seen that gives credit for all the open source library sound effects it uses.