Crushed

Set in Bangkok Olivia (Margaux Dietrich) is given a kitten for her birthday whom she names Missy. Her father Daniel (Steve Oram) is the local vicar, with his Thai wife May (May Nattaporn Rawddon). It’s a placement, with a small congregation in the city.

For some reason best known to themselves Marcus (Nadech Chatwin), the son of one of the congregation and friend, decide it's appropriate to show Olivia an online video of a kitten being crushed and then killed. Naturally Olivia is horrified. To Marcus it’s just something on the internet that has piqued his curiosity.

Missy goes missing and as Olivia searches around the area for her, comes to the attention of Stanley (Christian Ferriera), who in turn has a ‘working’ relationship with touring paedophile (Jonathan Samson). Stanley produces the crush videos for a tidy sum though claims to have nothing to do with the paedophile’s appetites. This is something tested while Stanley is interrogated by police and vigilantes.

Written and directed by Simon Rumley there are several issues intertwined that make for a difficult film to settle into. Most pronounced is Daniel’s internal and external battle with his faith/conscience and with his wife once Stanley is in custody and confessing to his crimes.

The other is the apparent normalisation within a certain age group to the casual cruelty to live animals and by extension humans for entertainment. It’s troubling that they see these horrific acts in the same way as fictional horror. However very little is actually shown on screen with the images of peoples’ contorting faces more than enough to convey to the viewer’s imagination the gruesome images being watched.

Rumley doesn’t make it easy for the viewer with an on the nose script where there is no debate as to the horror of the crimes. There’s more flexibility when it comes to how justice is met out where as gruesome as it is, it could elicit some element of understanding. But Rumley doesn’t relieve the pressure on the viewer, with them depressingly knowing that Stanley wasn’t the sole actor, or the worst.

Crushed will be on UK digital 5 October 2026 from GrimmVision.