REVIEW: DEATH GRIP (SHORT) ★★★★★
DEATH GRIP (19 min.) is written and directed by Danish screenwriter and director David Silset (BATTLE MIND, AVALANCHE) and is his graduation film from alternative film school 18Frames, one of quite a few new film schools to arise over the years to challenge The Danish National Film School who has fostered great directors such as Lars Von Trier and Thomas Vinterberg. However, the crop of 2022 has nothing to be ashamed about and if DEATH GRIP is anything to go by, they have definitely stepped out of the shadows of their older siblings like Super16 and The Danish Film School dating back all the way to 1966.
David Silset’s short film is a potent story about a young man’s addiction to porn and his struggles to keep himself and his relationship together. The film excels at taking the addiction serious – just like it should – and it combines the subject matter with great directing, cinematography and David’s personal artistic touch to symbolize the main character’s ordeals.
NOAH (Kasper Løfwall Steensbirk) is the epitome of a young, rough man that oozes masculinity, but struggles to come to terms with his inner taboo and the soft therapeutic approach that he experiences from RUMLE (Martin Hestbæk), who oversees a local addiction group of men in all ages who suffer from porn addictions in various degrees.
At the heart of it all is Noah’s love for his girlfriend EMILIE (Sofie Juul Blinkenberg) who feels rejected every time they try to make love and desperately tries to understand what’s going on and with Noah’s difficulty in explaining the depth of the addiction and the devastating hold it has on him the relationship slowly, but surely falls apart.
In the dying minutes of the film, it all comes to a head and Noah’s inner world of shame, guilt, fear and sense of loss unravels and collapses as the addiction slowly penetrates all aspects of his life and puts him in a tight death grip that drives him to act out in the violent and unsettling finale.
The title DEATH GRIP is cleverly used as a metaphor for Noah’s escalating tension of guilt and shame inside, but also taps into the anecdotal “Death Grip Syndrome”, which - in part – is recognized as a condition where men during masturbation take such a tight grip on their penis that the unavertable desensitizing leads to difficulty in having orgasm during normal intercourse. Something that Emilie experiences first hand and in part is the driving force behind Noah’s excessive use of porn.
