Three young women wake up, confused and terrified, in a room that looks like a cross between a normal hospital room and the creepy underground lair of some mad scientist from a horror movie. A video screen flickers on and a creepy older man, looking a bit like Academy-award-nominee Robert Loggia, appears on it, telling the women that he’s their “jailer.” The women, you see, had all been getting abortions when their jailer’s shadowy accomplices kidnapped them and brought them to this strange prison, where they will be forced to live for the next seven months until they gave birth. “You were all on the operating table, all ready to commit murder,” announces a mysterious doctor. “Your babies will be given life just as God planned.”
This is the premise of a new horror film called The Life Zone, which recently had its world premiere at the prestigious, er, Hoboken International Film Festival, a festival that was, perhaps not coincidentally, founded and chaired by the film’s writer and producer, Kenneth del Vecchio. In case you think I’m making all this up, here’s the film’s trailer, which makes The Life Zone look a bit like an equal-parts mixture of Saw, Human Centipede, and The Handmaid’s Tale, with Robert Loggia in the role of Jigsaw/Dr. Heiter/The Commander:
Now, if you thought that something seemed really … off about that trailer, well, you’re not alone. For the film is not, as you might have assumed from my description, a warning against the fanatical misogyny of many in the anti-abortion movement.
No, the film – produced by a pro-life former judge, crime thriller author, and Republican New Jersey state senate candidate – is meant as pro-life propaganda. As the offical press release for the film’s premiere put it:
The film, which appears to cut right down the middle [of the abortion debate], examining the topic from both sides, offers a powerful, anti-abortion climactic twist. Del Vecchio and the cast invite pro-lifers to come to this historic event.
During the months the three women are held in captivity, you see, they are exposed to a barrage of films and books intended to, er, educate them about abortion –what their attending obstetrician Dr. Wise describes as “an abortion think tank.” Two of the captive women do indeed convert to the pro-life side; apparently we in the audience are supposed to develop Stockholm Syndrome along with them. The third, as we see in the trailer, tries to induce a miscarriage, which doesn’t go quite as planned.
And this sets us up for the final twist, which I’m just going to go ahead and reveal: once all three women have given birth, Dr. Wise tells them she’s going to sew them all, mouth-to-vagina, into a Human Abortion-pede!
Actually no: the twist is that the “life zone” the three women in has actually been … purgatory! All three “captives,” you see, had died on the operating table while getting their abortions. (Apparently they went to the world’s worst abortion clinic, as first-trimester abortions don’t involve anything more surgically invasive than the insertion of a suction tube; the risk of death from a legal surgical abortion is 0.0006%, one in 160,000 cases, making the procedure many times safer than childbirth itself.) Their time in the “life zone” was a test: the two women who changed their minds were whisked up to heaven, while their miscarriage-attempting, stubbornly pro-choice companion is sent straight to H-E-Double-Hockey-Sticks. Dr. Wise, despite being on the right side of the abortion question, also goes to hell for committing suicide. And, oh yeah, their jailer – Loggia – was Satan. Why Satan and a hell-bound doctor were the ones trying to convert the abortion ladies to the pro-life side I can’t tell you; del Vecchio’s theology is evidently more sophisticated than I am.
The real twist here? As Jersey Journal writer Alan Robb notes:
The Life Zone went viral across the internet [last] Friday after blogs The Frisky and Talking Points Memo picked up on the film’s trailer. … But despite garnering more than 20,000 hits on YouTube in the last four days, only fifty people – including the film’s cast and producers – attended this weekend’s screening, and even those who starred in the movie didn’t know how to interpret its twist ending.
It’s impossible to tell from the trailer if the film is bad in a so-bad-it’s-good way, or if it’s just plain awful. I will try to get hold of it when it hits video, and will report back with my results.
In the meantime, if you’re looking for a good horror film set in a creepy hospital, try renting Infection, a Japanese film from 2005. Or, if you’ve got a longer attention span, try Lars Von Trier’s supernatural soap opera The Kingdom, a darkly comic miniseries which takes place in what one might call, paraphrasing Bill Murray’s character in Tootsie, “one nutty hospital.” Both are conveniently available on Netflix instant watch, so you don’t even have to leave your pregnancy dungeon to see them.
EDITED: Added some info on the minimal dangers of abortion procedures.
@Ami
Life Wars: A New Torture
Life Wars 2: The Woman Strikes Back
Life Wars 3: Return of the Fetii
Though that could actually be titles for chapters in the original.
Also, NWO has inspired me to ask just 2 questions for all you evil fymynysts out their!
a) If your grandmother died before giving birth to your mother, would you be here posting?
b) If I traveled back in time and killed your great-great-great-great grandfather while he was a young lad, would you be dead?
Checkmate, you evil abortion lovers!
If my mom had had an abortion btw, she prolly would have left my dad and not been in a horrifically abusive marriage and been abused by him.
And had she done that obv I wouldn’t be here to talk about it xD But if you’re asking me now how I would feel if that had been her decision and I didn’t exist? Fine…. if actually her life was spared all that pain and sorrow and she was happier for it, I would be happy for her too 🙂 (and no I wouldn’t have been dead or murdered, and yes I do enjoy my life, but then a million things could have been different in the past and I’d never have existed.. xD)
Oh and… to others:
The movie concept and how much it wants to torture and hurt women btw is horrifying D: And I also get the triggering aspect 🙁 So now I hope I didn’t offend nebody. I sometimes deal w/ awfulness by laughing at the absurdity of it… but I just realized that I might have been way too flip about something that’s extremely personal or painful to others (I meant a sequel as in crazy devil pants comes back as like Freddy or the Saw guy not equal in awfulness) : So I apologize if I did 🙂
a) If your grandmother died before giving birth to your mother, would you be here posting?
b) If I traveled back in time and killed your great-great-great-great grandfather while he was a young lad, would you be dead?
what SHOULD this movie be named? What would YOU name it?
The Hangover 3
Revenge of The Sluts
The Handmaid’s Tale. Oh wait.
Actual comment on the original post:
I’m confused about something. Did Dr. Wise perform the abortions on all three women at the same time or botch three in a row? Did she only perform it on one of them? I mean, she committed suicide, I assume over a botched abortion, but it could have been unrelated. What contrived reason was she there, exactly?
Also, I think the movie could serve quite well as Saw #[whatever they’re up to, eight maybe?]
“Hello Jennifer. I want to play a game. Inside your body, there is a living organism. Living… and growing. Eventually it will grow too big for your body, and force its way out through a very… heh, heh, personal area. You cannot leave this room. You cannot stop it. How much blood will you shed to stay alive?”
LifeZone 2: ELECTRIC BOOGALOO!
The twist should have been that she was actually God or something xD
Last debunk of the night. All of you murderous swine seem to need this one, as you lamely tried to dismiss my questions. Your answers centered around you wouldn’t be dead because you never existed.
Well if they never “existed” than why was there an abortion? How can you abort something that never existed? Why even get an abortion at all for something that doesn’t exist?
or the baby is Luke Skywalker!
…wait, that was almost the actual plot of that third prequel, wasn’t it?
Well if they never “existed” than why was there an abortion? How can you abort something that never existed? Why even get an abortion at all for something that doesn’t exist?
I am writhing in the grasp of his crushing logic.
I’m also writhing from the inability to take a dump, since poop is not a sentient being, it does not exist, and thus I CANNOT POOP!
debunk that you murderous swine
NWO:
Because you are a complete imbecile, sorry for the offense to imbeciles, and you think that abortion=killing a person. An abortion is not killing a person, and abortion is a procedure that removes fetal tissue from the uterus to prevent pregnancy, or summat. A FETUS IS NOT A PERSON. So a person doesn’t need to exist for an abortion to take place.
Why even get an abortion at all for something that doesn’t exist?
Fetuses exist. They have a presence in space-time and a measurable mass.
They do not, however, exist as people.
Easy way to fix this
NWO what do you think ppl meant when they said “I never would have existed?” Be specific… cuz I think we’re using the same word for 2 different meanings xD
Somehow I suspect he doesn’t want to do the easy way to fix this xD
Amnesia – I suspect (having not seen the movie) that Dr. Wise had nothing to do with those three particular abortions, but committed suicide over a different abortion.
Well if they never “existed” than why was there an abortion? How can you abort something that never existed? Why even get an abortion at all for something that doesn’t exist?
Slaver is a moron. I could swear the difference between a child and a fetus has been pointed out several times. The idea of consciousness is probably a bit too complex though.
Sometimes I think Slaver doesn’t exist either, he’s just a Turing experiment that got loose. It mimics the form of an argument, but still can’t handle the content.
NWO – a zygote, or a fetus would have existed. I do not identify with that fetus as ME.
An early precursor to me, sure. But not me. Not a person.
@zombie rotten mcdonald crap…. you just reminded me *goes off to check on program she wrote 10 years ago to run on it’s own*
oh…
my…
god…
WHO PLUGGED THAT MODEM CABLE IN!?
-_-
Guys, I’m so sorry… this is my fault
First of all, let me answer your questions NWO:
No, if I were successfully aborted I wouldn’t be posting here. I would never have existed.
No, if I were successfully aborted I wouldn’t be dead. I would never have existed.
You may not be more than cells and a few electrical impulses but I am. I am a sentient being with a physical body. I have a brain. There’s little wonder that you are unable to tell the difference.
So, in the event of an unplanned pregnancy shared custody should be strictly enforced and, in your view, this will eliminate the need for child support rulings or assistance from the state. Is this your position? What if the father is in prison? What if the mother is in prison? Are the grandparents then, automatically on the hook for enforced custody? What if they can’t afford it? Does enforced custody then pass to aunts and uncles? First and second cousins?
How will shared custody be enforced if one of the biological parents is physically, mentally, or financially incapable of sharing custody?
As far as the state helping support children who live at or below the poverty line, you do know that some of those children do have married parents who do not, as a couple, have the funds to support all their needs. Are you suggesting that the state should not help with the medical care of children whose parents cannot afford it?
Really?
Are you suggesting that a child born to parents who are impovershed should die of cancer if their parents cannot afford it?
1) If a sentient child dies as a result of inadequate medical care are they really dead?
2)Would they be posting here?
+ Eleventybillion Internets to Ami!!!
Dr. Wise experiences flashbacks to the dissolution of her marriage which fell apart when she learned she couldn’t bear children. Her parents cursed her for not taking better care of her body, a poor diet, too much work, while her husband – The Karate Kid’s bad sensei Martin Kove – divorces her, leaving her for a woman capable of having his children, a moment that pushes Dr. Wise to desperate measures.
So yeah. Never even mind abortion–she had to die because of the sin of being infertile.
You fool, Ami! What have you done? Now you know what happens when you try to play cybernetic God! Now we’ll have to send you to hell, where you’ll be forced to type code into a little box and have it delete itself upon running for the rest of eternity!
If my parents had never met, I would cease to exist also. That doesn’t make their egg and sperm “my existence” or the egg “half my existence” and the sperm “the other half my existence” or the act that led to things that led to my conception “the early part of my existence” either >_>;;
Tho maybe it should! 😀
Ami Angelwings: she exists in everything, everybody and everywhere and everywhen! >:3