Review: Davide Melini’s ‘LION’ will lick your bones clean

7.5 million children were subject to abuse in 2017 and nearly five die every single day. Those staggering statistics speak to a reality severely lacking in compassion or responsibility, and with it comes the haunting reminder that closed doors often harbor dark, unspeakable secrets. Employing such a heart-rending benchmark for his new psycho-thriller, LION, which as made the festival circuit rounds the past two years, collecting various shiny trophies, Italian screenwriter and director Davide Melini focuses his attentions on poetic tragedy as much as the perverted justice of it all. But he neither writhes in the pain nor celebrates the aftermath. In fact, he lures the viewer into a hypnotic, paralyzing state of trembling fears and nail biting, doomsday apocalyptica.

The short film, which boasts official selection distinctions from 2017 Los Angeles CineFest, 2018 David Di Donatello and 2018 Suspiria Film Festival, twists ravenous images of lions for a shockingly tense and bloody satisfying fantasy-bender. Michael Segal (The Reaping, Zombie Massacre 2: Reich of the Dead) looms as the booze-soaked abuser, whose crimes begin to distort his own perceptions of reality, soon cascading him into a fit of hallucinations. Counter-balancing Segal’s commanding presence, Tania Mercader steps out with an emotionally-charged, gut-punching performance as the battered (but complicit) housewife. In many of the sequence’s quieter, artfully-framed moments, Mercader grounds the story to allow the audience to sink ever further into understanding tremendous psychological mayhem. Child actor Pedro Sánchez emerges as our wide-eyed protagonist who has been thrust into a dangerous underground world of violence and must find his way out before it’s too late.

Melini, whose resume includes such assistant director credits as Into the Badlands, Penny Dreadful and Dario Argento’s Mother of Tears: The Third Mother, plays with delightful camerawork and cool, shadowy, hair-splitting color palettes and often allows shots to sit just long enough to raise goosebumps on the back of the neck. Too, the score is effectively brandished to mirror the onscreen anxiety, sometimes filtered through the blurred lines of a lion’s snarl and low growl to tighten the screws much further. Even with few speaking lines, Sánchez’s face if often warped in fear and riddled with the kind of child-like devastation that’ll make your stomach turn.

The nightmare, set in a snowy cabin in the middle of nowhere, ravages the senses from start to terrifying finale. Blood-curdling cries and the crunch of body matter against wood primes for 10 minutes of unholiness that soon bursts into glorious redemption. When the credits roll, you’re left with a scream curling at the end of your tongue and unsure what to do next. Melini has a surefire hit on his hands, and we’re the lowly voyeurs along for the ride.

Lion is produced by a smorgasbord of talent, including Luca Vannella (Thor: Ragnarok, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows), Alexis Continente (Rogue One: A Star Wars Story), Vincenzo Mastrantonio (Titanic, Moulin Rouge!), Bobby Holland Hanton (Wonder Woman, Inception), Ferdinando Merolla (Troy, Hannibal Rising) and Roberto Paglialunga (To Rome with Love).

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