When I said in my review of the previous episode that Frank’s hotel battle was the all-out action extravaganza we were waiting for, I now realize I was wrong. It’s not action that a Punisher show promises—it’s punishment. And punishment is what we get. From director Kevin Hook’s eerie establishing shots of his nearly-abandoned headquarters’ empty rooms and corridors through the moment Frank suits up in his skull-emblazoned armor and into the ensuing massacre itself, the show positions Frank as an executioner rather than a soldier.
And he’s starring not in an adventure film but a horror flick. The way Castle dispatches the first few goons one by one, emerging from behind as if he’s a part of the walls themselves that somehow came alive, evokes the slaughter of the Colonial Marines when they enter the hive in Aliens. The industrial-basement setting is obviously a favorite of any number of forgettable genre flicks and shows by now, but when you factor in the gore and sadism you’re not far removed from mid-‘00s torture porn like Saw or Hostel. Meanwhile, Frank’s imposing physical comportment and even some of the music cues (I swear I heard a few Friday the 13th-style “chh chh chh”s) are straight-up slasher stuff, even before you see him walking around with a severed head.
Oh yeah, did I not mention the severed head? Maybe I should have led with that.
Frank Castle may draw on, and parallel, a long tradition of violent macho men famous during the character’s initial flourishing in the ‘80s and ‘90s. But neither John McClane nor John Rambo nor even the Terminator ever severed all the muscles in a man’s legs, allowing him to crawl across the floor leaving a snail trail of blood before finally plugging him in the head. The point is that while Frank’s rampage is thrilling in the sense of getting your blood up, you’ll never mistake it for anything but murder, as prolonged and ugly as it gets.
I reviewed the extremely violent eleventh episode of The Punisher for Decider.
Tags: decider, horror, Marvel, reviews, the punisher, TV, TV reviews