The Monster of Mangatiti (2015)

FILM GUTTER
Come on in, the water's monstrous...
 
The Monster of Mangatiti (2015)
Dir. Ric Pellizerri, New Zealand, 69 min

Welcome back to Film Gutter, and tonight we're venturing to new shores. Our tour of extreme cinema has taken us to plenty of places so far, but this is our first visit to the islands of New Zealand. Another movie I knew nothing much about, having simply stumbled across this one on UK Netflix – and the blurb of the story of a young girl trapped and kidnapped a long way from civilisation and New Zealand certainly made this one sound just our particularly strange cup of tea. So without a second thought I pressed play on The Monster of Mangatiti.

Welcome back to Film Gutter, and tonight we're venturing to new shores. Our tour of extreme cinema has taken us to plenty of places so far, but this is our first visit to the islands of New Zealand. Another movie I knew nothing much about, having simply stumbled across this one on UK Netflix – and the blurb of the story of a young girl trapped and kidnapped a long way from civilisation and New Zealand certainly made this one sound just our particularly strange cup of tea. So without a second thought I pressed play on The Monster of Mangatiti.
 
We do occasionally step into 'Inspired by a True Story' territory here at Film Gutter, but many of those take that inspiration pretty loosely. Movies like Cannibal or The Eight Immortals stand on their own two feet regardless of the events that brought about their existence. In the case of The Monster of Mangatiti, the events that happened to Heather Walsh are presented in a fairly literal and dare I say unartistic way. That's not to say this isn't an interesting movie, but it's certainly something different to what we've encountered previously.
 
The story is narrated by Walsh as we see a dramatic representation of what happened to her as a teenager play out before us. As a young student, she goes on a trip to the distant farm of Bill Cornelius to tutor his young son. At first things are idyllic in the beautiful countryside, but it doesn't take long for things to turn sour, with first emotional and then physical abuse being heaped upon Heather. After she is raped by Cornelius she finds out she is pregnant, which simply goes to compound the situation. Even though Heather does occasionally take escorted trips away from the farm, she is so afraid to say anything with threats to her and her family that she simply endures the constant torture by Cornelius. She continues to try and plot an escape, but the emotional connection with Cornelius' young son keeps her from doing so a number of times. Only in discovering her letters from home – kept from her by Cornelius – does she eventually find the strength to make good her getaway and try to adapt back into society.
 
There are some harrowing moments here, but nothing much is presented in heavy detail and it's ultimately a far more psychological take on what happened to Walsh – and, as was later discovered, a number of other young girls who fell victim to Cornelius. At the end of the movie we find out that by the time Walsh went to the police, her tormentor was suffering so badly with dementia he could not be tried, a bitter footnote to a story of survival against the odds.
 
It's a hard one to rate, all told – the acting is OK if not brilliant, and I must admit I found my attention drifting for sure towards the end of the movie, despite the runtime being relatively short. It's probably a story that needs to be told, but I'm not sure that it's a story that demands to be watched. Unfortunately It's the classic victim story, and even though the story was true in all its detail it was frustrating to watch this injustice going on and being endured by the injured party. I was certainly itching for the fightback, which arrived more in the form of Walsh finding herself and her strength than any direct revenge she was able to mete out.
 
RATING: 5/10. This one almost falls into documentary rather than fiction, and as such I found it to be more faintly interesting than compelling. The acting from the dramatisation is fair, and the story itself is pretty dark, but there's certainly not the level of horror that we've seen elsewhere in the series. Ultimately it feels like it could have been a TV programme instead of a film – one of those true crime series would probably have loved this one. As such, it's hard to rate this one anything but a right down the middle 5/10.