In short: Death Ranch (2020)

1971. Brandon Cobbs (Deiondre Teagle) somehow manages to escape from imprisonment for a crime he may or may not have committed, ending up in a pretty swampy looking patch of woods somewhere in the South. His siblings Angela (Faith Monique) and Clarence (Travis Cutner) come to help him out, and together, the three decide to wait out some of the heat that must be coming after Brandon hiding in an old farmhouse half a state or so over.

Alas, the place they’ve chosen is not ideal for three African-Americans, for it is in the territory of a Klan chapter which not only consists of your usual violent racist pea brains in silly outfits, but violent racist pea brains in silly outfits who are also cannibals. When Brandon witnesses and interrupts the first Klan murder ritual he stumbles upon at night, all hell breaks loose.

Or really, as much hell as the budget of Charlie Steeds’s Death Ranch can allow, so don’t expect a huge – or even middling - number of locations and more than a minor horde of cannibals. Fortunately, the director is very adept at filming around problems like that in a way that distracts from them so much, they stop being problems and just become part of the general background of the film; things you notice when you keep an eye out and think about them, but not things that get in the way.

Typically, Steeds is about as British a filmmaker as you can be when making gory low budget fare, but he doesn’t seem to have much trouble with adapting to a short stint in America, leaning into the history of backwoods and survival horror movies with loving care.

The whole film is simple, but also very satisfying, putting the emphasis less on the racists torturing the black protagonists, but much more on the latter striking back, so there’s pleasantly little – beyond what you need to set things up properly – to watch of black people being violated, and quite a bit more of the racist cannibals getting killed and mutilated via fun practical effects. Thanks to a general sense of fun and a pleasantly light hand when it is needed, the whole affair, despite objectively being rather tasteless from time to time, never feels mean-spirited or unpleasant (unless you’re a cannibalistic Nazi, I suppose).

As usual in most of Steeds’s films, the bloody violence is choreographed effectively, and shot and edited with a sense of vigour and pace, using as much time for characterisation and interpersonal elements as you need for the plot to work, putting the emphasis on keeping things decidedly un-boring. Which makes it crap as a meditation on family or race relations, I suppose, but rather great at being the joyful exploitation throwback it is supposed to be.