This is my review for The Pet directed by D Stevens. My God. Where do I begin. Mr. Kinnk bought this, assuring me I’d love it. Hmm, without wanting to be disrespectful to my lovely Sir, this film is awful. Just excretable. It claims to be a story about submissives who want to be pets. Apparently, this is a ‘lifestyle’ film that explores the unconditional submission of those who choose to be pets, and conflates it with the very real human problem of slave trafficking. ‘Pets’ (read: nubile young women) are sold as pet slaves/ human organ sources and there is a Global Slave Market which is run from a shack in the snowy wilderness. Occasionally, a medical van turns up with a couple of God-awful badly acted Hick types who come to take bought slaves away, brand them and nick their vital organs. I was just waiting for them to declare the girl was ‘purdy’.
This film is just awful. It tries to be too many things, an examination of Dom/sub pet relationships and a social commentary on human trafficking. It then mashes the two together into a completely implausible, imbecilic plot that makes a Barbara Cartland novel look like a work of great erudition and intelligence. In fact, it is a giant dog’s dinner of a film, if it can be called a film. The acting is dire, dreadful and plain wooden. Not one of the actors (and I use the term in the loosest possible way) looked as if they were doing anything more taxing than reading an autocue whilst scratching their arses. I’ve seen better acting from those twonks on TV adverts trying to get people to sell their gold for bog all, or those adverts for tampons where the women become miraculously energetic and sporty as soon as they shove one of the advertised cotton wads up their fanjo.
Anyway, I digress. The makers cannot even get simple details right: O negative is the universal donor, not O positive. Their ‘ideal’ of consent is problematic. Giving an individual large sums of money to enter into a BDSM relationship certainly isn’t true consent. Never mind the trivializing of the very real problem human trafficking, which has absolutely nothing to do with consensual BDSM relationships. The makers then try to take the moral high ground as the end credits roll through a list of countries with real-life details of how trafficking affects them individually.
I want those 90 minutes back. Please.