Tormented is set in a modern British comprehensive school, where the lonely and overweight outsider, Darren Mullet, has just taken his own life after constant, unbearable bullying. His tormentors are the ‘cool’ senior kids, one of whom befriends the seemingly perfect head girl, Justine. Not long after his funeral, students start to see Darren again – and he is determined to take his revenge. As Justine realises the full extent of the bullying, and gradually understands quite how responsible her new friends are, she is forced to confront her own, inadvertent involvement in Darren’s death.
Classification Issues
- Violence
- There are scenes of violence in which a victim is repeatedly stabbed with a screwdriver. In another scene, a boy is killed when pencils are pushed up his nostrils before his head is slammed down. Other scenes of bloodier or more gory violence (for example, blood spurting copiously from a woman's severed wrists, an eye popping out of its socket and an impalement on railings) are tinged by a comedic element that mitigates the horror considerably.
- Language
- There are several uses of strong language ('f**k').
- Sex
- The film contains some sex scenes, which include thrusting, as well as some crude sex references.
Cinema classification
This British revenge horror/black comedy is director Jon Wright’s debut feature length film, which arrived for classification by the BBFC in November 2008.
The film stars several young actors that would have been familiar to the audience at the time from other teen/children’s TV series and films, such as Skins, Grange Hill, Stormbreaker and Wild Child.
The film came with a 15 request from the distributor. This resulted in the BBFC conducting three separate advice viewings during post-production, as the special effects and final editing were being finalised. Advice viewings are a service available to distributors who require an indication of what category a film is likely to achieve ahead of its formal submission.
At the initial advice viewings, the quantity of strong language in the film (multiple uses of ‘f**k’ and ‘motherf***er’) established 15 as the minimum category. However, one highly aggressive use of very strong language (‘c**t’) gave cause for concern under the BBFC Classification Guidelines at the time, as did the levels of horror and detailed violence.
Despite the fantastical horror context of a teenager returning from the dead, the BBFC was concerned about such strong content appearing in the otherwise highly realistic, recognisable and contemporary setting, in the context of peer bullying. Although, in some ways, the film is a traditional morality tale, it was felt that the film’s structure and conclusion allowed for little genuine sympathy for the character of Darren. There was discussion about whether the attractive, “cool” characters were portrayed in a manner that could be perceived as glamorous, and whether the anti-bullying message was articulated clearly enough to offset their potential appeal to younger viewers.
Examples of material that took the versions of the film seen for advice beyond the 15 category, and were subsequently cut or edited during post-production to achieve the requested classification, included:
sexual bullying of the naked Darren in the school showers
the sexualised and bloody killing of a partially naked boy – who is dragged from a car where he is having sex and repeatedly stabbed in the groin with a broken bottle
close-up sight of the bottling victim’s severed penis in a bloody condom
explicit, close-up detail and focus on a screwdriver being pushed into a boy’s palm and slowly withdrawn, and also into his neck, with copious resultant blood flow
extended focus on two pencils deliberately driven up through a boy’s nostrils, penetrating his brain and killing him
When completed film was formally examined, it was classified 15 for strong bloody violence, strong language, sex and sex references.
The final, 15-rated version of the film still retains strong elements that place it at the upper end of the category. The strongest violence includes the screwdriver stabbings, and the suggestion that a boy is killed by having pencils stuck up his nostrils before his head is slammed down on them. Though strong, after careful editing the sequences, the violence no longer dwelt on the infliction of pain and injury in a way that would have required an 18 rating. Other gory scenes were mitigated by the film's special effects and clearly humorous presentation – similar to scenes in other 15-rated horror works such as Shaun of the Dead and Severance.
