With Xpiation (Italy - 2018) impressively concludes the "Death Trilogy", the brutal Italian extreme saga produced by Domiziano Cristopharo (House of Flesh Mannequins, Doll Syndrome, Red Krokodil). Like the previous chapters viz. American Guinea Pig: Sacrifice by Poison Rouge and Torment by Adam Ford, also Xpiation is the representation of suffering and pain and offers a slew of martyrs performed with colorful originality.
Directed by Italian director Domiziano Cristopharo, this concluding chapter benefits from fine cinematography but also from an intense script that serves as a valuable background for the female lead character (an extraordinary Chiara Pavoni), an iconic creature who embodies, at once, suffering and pleasure but also destruction.
From the sparse dialogues, Xpiation gives way to heinous actions becoming a spiral of torment and wailing, an escalation of pain in which words are superfluous.
Seasoned with various brutalities, Xpiation it also surprises with some extraordinary framing (evidence of expert direction) that highlights a brilliant refinement of images in which the elegant protagonist takes center stage. All this is contrasted with the most extreme violence and gore (in which Athanasius Pernath's practical effects are appreciated) with repeated slaps and punches to the face followed by blows and burns with iron, scraping with steel abrasive sponge, acid, use of hammer on private parts, and much more.
In the gloomy setting enveloped and traversed by the atmospheres of a piercing and somber music, the instigator of the execution is a woman darkened by her past but who, despite this, shines with elegant sensuality. Moved by a single goal, she perfectly combines class with extreme forms of sadism and masochism, becoming a perfect, fascinating and unforgettable villain.
In this film in which body and soul are mercilessly torn apart, the coveted death praised in the astonishing trilogy that began with Sacrifice becomes the only means of atoning for all sins but only after a heavy path dense with torment. The three chapters "Sacrifice," "Torment," and "Atonement" trace the cruel path underlying this extraordinary extreme saga and culminating in a kind of sick purification.
Plot of Xpiation: Inside an abandoned building, a mysterious woman (Chiara Pavoni) is in the company of a drug addict (Simone Tolu) and a Hispanic man (Emanuele d'Elia) bound and gagged. Here, a camera constantly captures the pain the woman has the stranger inflict in a game of perversion that involves suffering and death.
The screenplay of Xpiation is by Andrea Cavaletto (Hidden in the Woods, Hyde's Secret Nightmare) while the soundtrack is by Antony Coia (Scarecrowd, Virus: Extreme Contamination).
The cast includes Chiara Pavoni (Demonium, Hyde's Secret Nightmare, P.O.E. 4 - The Black Cat, Jack the St. Ripper), Simone Tolu, Emanuele d'Elia, Vincenzo Zaccardi, Simone Avincola and Giorgio Agri.
Xpiation is produced by Stefano Bastiani and Domiziano Cristopharo. The latter also handled the photography.
