Scavenger (Carroña)

The Mad Max series have a lot to answer for with giving post-apocalyptic worlds the appearance of having been taken over by clones of The Exploited or Anti Nowhere League. That mohawk and leather look is back again in Scavenger an Argentinian film with the wearers exhibiting the now standard, requisite charm.

A dazzling white sand desert shot contrasts with the horrible food being served up in a filthy eating cabin. Served up by a chef who then proceeds to kill the patron for Tisha (Nayla Churruarin) to harvest the organs that are then taken to the Merchant (Eric Fleitas) in town to be weighed and sold. It’s a grisly mucky enterprise but the only that gets Tisha the money to pay for her drug habit.

Offered a job by Angelica (Rosa Isabel Cuenya Macedo) to infiltrate a gang and assassination Tisha takes it and finds that it’s a task beyond she was thinking after she is tricked into taking a spiked drink in a bar that acts as the gangs’ headquarters, led by Roger (Gonzalo Tolosa) whose girlfriend is the stripper Luna (Sofia Lanaro). Populated by the dregs Tisha is then lashed and taken into the backroom brothel where she is horribly abused, several times.

The possible justification for Tisha’s treatment from directors Eric Fleitas and Luciana Garraza (who are the writers along with Sheila Fentana) is that after her ordeal she’s empowered to go on killing spree. The problem is that no amount of vengeance blood letting will make up for the ugly misogyny of many of the scenes and the use of a certain C word in the most objectionable ways possible.

Granted this sort of thing is hard to balance. Bute here they have crossed into gratuitous exploitation with the use of that word as a name for a character and a description of what Tisha becomes to the men using the brothel. And was there a need to prolong the gruelling rape scenes to make the point?

Those elements flatten the film which with a strong female protagonist (if deeply flawed herself as a killer and drug taker) in her version of a souped-up police interreceptor along the lashings of ludicrous blood and death, could have said something about family and loyalty building on the pre apocalyptic scenes at the beginning, as well as being gleefully over the top with the violence.

The film actually doesn’t look at all bad when on the open Argentinian road and landscapes, plus it has a well-judged soundtrack. And there is a story to tell about the complete to collapse of society with humanity devolving to nothing more than life by transaction and completely blurring the lines of good and bad.

This could have been a knowingly trashy grindhouse throwback. As it stands even at seventy-five minutes it feels padded and to appear to have it padded by scenes of rape and abuse looks like a serious misjudgement.

Scavenger will be released on demand and on streaming platforms from 11 May.