The spirit of Dogma. A young writer, endowed not only with intelligence, but also with good looks, in order to collect material about life in the Negro ghetto, decides to plunge headlong into the life of her studied heroes and settle in this very ghetto. Not the best idea for an intelligent girl, given that she begins to be molested by the local young inhabitants, who, faced with rejection, will show all their cruelty towards her.
The second directorial work of the American Sean Wavers, the film “They must all die!” in 1998, after a very short North American limited release, pretty soon fell into the category of “forbidden cinema”, managing to make the director a cult figure. The film is, on the one hand, an example of deep exploitation (or, to be more precise, blaxplotation, while largely exposing the canons of this subgenre to destruction) and deep underground a la light pseudo-snuff, built on psychological violence, playing at the same time on the field created by Trier and Winterberg “Dogma-95”, giving the output as a wildly low-budget, but strictly social film, in which in a shocking, but not disgustingly naturalistic form shows the confrontation of racial and cultural, the confrontation that arose from mutual understanding and lack of humanity.
More cruel social sketches of morals and characters, lumpenes and those looking down on them, the display of racial politics, than, in fact, a horror film, "They must die!" give the viewer the impression of aggressive transgression, a powerful blow to the head when looking at undistilled and dirty reality. A reality in which all the worst nightmares in their most deviant form are possible. Sean Wavers does not flirt with the viewer, does not bypass acute themes in the film, focusing on them the primary attention, in the finale of the tape providing ambiguity of interpretations and completely taking the picture away from the pornographic environment attributed to it. The deliberate feeling of voyeurism and complicity is emphasized by the rough work of the operator (a little more, and the tape would turn into just home videos, but Sean Wavers talentedly uses all the possibilities of low-budget cinema), the play of actors who allegedly do not play and seem to be taken from the ghetto itself (I think this is so), and the complete lack of musical accompaniment, enhancing the realism of what is happening.
So, 'They Must Die!' is a very specific author's product of independent cinema. Fans of non-standard horror films and author's films are recommended to watch.
6 out of 10