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Salvage (2006)

  • ️Sat Sep 28 2024

Salvage (2006) (Film)

Salvage (released as Gruesome outside of the United States) is a 2006 horror movie by the Crook Brothers. Claire Parker finds herself reliving her brutal murder at the hands of Duke Desmond over and over again. As she tries to alter the circumstances, she learns more about Duke Desmond and what tie he has with her current fate.

This film contains examples of:

  • Adults Are Useless: All the adults come across as apathetic to Claire's predicament, and even the police serve as little help, even mocking her like children when she goes to the station for help. The reveal explains this: the setting is Duke Desmond's personal hell as lived out through his victim's shoes and everyone's treatment of him is meant to add to the hopelessness he feels at his situation.
  • All Just a Dream: Seemingly how Claire's time loops work. When she falls asleep, she dreams of an incident in Duke's life, then generally wakes up to a new start. Later in the movie, this is invoked by the police when she believes she fought off an attacking Duke.
  • All Men Are Perverts: Duke Desmond attacks Claire because of her lack of interest in him, sexual or otherwise. Claire's boyfriend isn't much better, as he makes lewd jokes at his girlfriend's expense, even during her attempts to have a serious conversation, and also "jokes" about having a dream where he, Claire, and her best friend had a threesome, then tries to pressure her into asking the friend to make that dream a reality. It makes you wonder why she even wants to be with him. It's possible that this isn't the real Jimmy's personality and a corrupted depiction of him to make Duke's hell worse.
  • Amnesia Loop: It's implied that part of Duke's punishment involves coming to terms with his true identity and the crime for which he is being punished—killing Claire Parker and Jimmy. However, when the loop resets to the beginning after he learns the truth, his personality and memories are erased, forcing him to go through that realization over again and again for all eternity.
  • And I Must Scream: Duke Desmond is trapped in an endless loop where he is forced to live out his victim's murder for all eternity with no way to escape it. It's an entirely deserved fate on his part, however.
  • Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: Everyone Claire meets, with the exception of her boyfriend, who is openly an asshole, has some hidden malicious intent toward her. Justified, since this is Duke Desmonds Hell.
  • Book Ends: "Busy night?"
  • Boom, Headshot!: How the real Duke Desmond died—Detective Miller blew off half his head with a shotgun.
  • Bratty Teenage Daughter: Claire comes off as one during her interactions with her mother, interrupting her and disrespecting her authority despite the latter's efforts to look out for her. She still worries about her mother, however, especially as the plot about the murder loop begins to unravel.
  • Cruel and Unusual Death: Claire was brutalized and had her face cut off while she was still alive before Duke murdered her. On the other hand, Duke's death in the real world was quick, but he suffers the same fate as Claire in the afterlife as part of his eternal punishment.
  • Dead All Along: Claire, Jimmy, and Duke are all dead with Duke reliving the murder over and over again.
  • Discovering Your Own Dead Body: Toward the end, Claire finds her own partially buried corpse wrapped in plastic, still missing its face and wearing one of her star earrings. Subverted, as "Claire" is actually Duke finding the real Claire's body the way he left it.
  • Eye Scream: To escape Duke's grasp in the convenience store, Claire jams her thumbs into his eye sockets.
  • Foreshadowing:

    Jimmy: Because he's dead, right?

    Elderly Man: Because he's in hell!

  • Ghostly Gape: Figures start doing this in the background as the movie proceeds to the climax.
  • "Groundhog Day" Loop: Claire is trapped in a time loop in which she's murdered by Duke Desmond over and over again. The length of the loop varies, as it only resets when she's killed, meaning that it can last several days before resetting.
  • Here We Go Again!: The film ends with Duke as Claire's coworker asking her "Busy night?" just as he did at the beginning of the movie, suggesting that the loop has reset to the very beginning and the events of the film will play out all over again.
  • Hope Spot: Toward the end of the film, Claire escapes to her best friends house who consoles her and assures her that she won't let anything happen to her. Cut to Claire waking up from a dream of Duke's death a few hours later and she overhears said friend letting the killer into the house and asking if she can watch him kill her.
  • Identity Amnesia: Duke doesn't remember his real identity until the end, which seems to be a part of his punishment.
  • Ironic Hell: Duke Desmond is trapped in a hell, being killed over and over, as he relives Claire Parker's death by his hands. Dante's The Divine Comedy is namechecked in the class that Claire is attending.
  • I Surrender, Suckers!: The real-life Duke attempted this on Detective Miller, whispering about The Schizophrenia Conspiracy before trying to shoot him. Miller is not fooled, however, and when Duke tries to bring his pistol around, Miller blows off half his head.
  • Jerkass: Jimmy qualifies. Though it's entirely possible that this is only true for "Jimmy" in Duke's personal hell and that the real Jimmy was better than that.
  • The Killer in Me: A variant. The Claire the movie follows is revealed to be the serial killer Duke Desmond trapped in her body to experience his murder of her for all eternity.
  • Laser-Guided Karma: Duke Desmond kills two teens and has karma handed to him pretty swiftly, as not only does he die by the hands of the police soon after committing the crime, but he's also sent to hell where he'll be forced to live out the murder in his victims' shoes for all eternity, with no way to escape or repent.
  • Limited Wardrobe: Claire is only seen in one outfit throughout the majority of the film and even puts the outfit back on after taking a shower and later a bath.
  • Major Injury Underreaction: Duke does not react at all when Claire jams her thumbs into his eyes, even as his blood spurts on her face. Justified, as that "Duke" is a demon playing a part to terrorize the real Duke in Claire's body.
  • Murder the Hypotenuse: Duke killed Jimmy to get to Claire, only to kill Claire because she wasn't receptive to his advances.
  • No-Holds-Barred Beatdown: Duke delivers several of these to Claire.
  • Police Are Useless: Zig-zagged. After Claire calls the police at the gas station, they arrive promptly and ready to help; that said, they quickly turn unprofessional when they watch back the CCTV footage and see that Claire didn't fight off an assailant, instead being shown on the video fighting herself, and start mocking her. The cops being indifferent to Claire's suffering is a part of Duke's punishment.
  • Punch-Clock Villain: All of the (possible) demons in Duke Desmond's hell are implied to be this. After Duke as Claire wakes up from his dream about Duke's death, he overhears the demon pretending to be the real Duke and the other pretending to be Claire's best friend casually laughing and chatting away like old friends in the living room, discussing his mental state and how he seems to be getting closer and closer to discovering the truth.
  • The Reveal: Claire and Jimmy have been murdered by Duke, who in turn was killed in a police shootout. "Claire" as we've seen her throughout the film is actually Duke Desmond's soul trapped in Claire's body, forced to relive his victim's murder by his own hand in an Ironic Hell.
  • Right Through His Pants: In one scene, Jimmy performs oral sex on Claire under the bleachers through her jeans, as the wide shot, possibly unintentionally, gives away.
  • Satan: It's implied that Claire's "mother" is actually Satan himself, if not some demon personally assigned to torment Duke for all eternity.
  • The Schizophrenia Conspiracy: When Duke is cornered by the police, he claims that voices in his head, caused by a secret implant, cause him to kill.
  • Tear Off Your Face: Easily the most horrifying scene of the movie.
  • Tears of Fear: "Claire"/Duke frequently breaks into tears at the climax of each loop.
  • Too Dumb to Live: While she doesn't deserve her fate, Claire makes some pretty fatal mistakes, such as agreeing to get into a stranger who claims to know her boyfriend without properly questioning his association with him and not dialing 911 after she notices Duke Desmond starting to get rather aggressive and stalkerish in his pursuit of her. Given that it's actually Duke Desmond reliving his murder of her in different ways, it's unknown if her initial death at the beginning of the movie is even an accurate depiction of the actions she took leading up to her death, or if it's just another scenario in which she dies.
  • World of Jerkass: Except for Claire's mother and best friend (at first), every character in the setting is kind of an asshole that doesn't particularly care about Claire's distress. Justified, as it's Hell, and the police officer who acts dismissively was actually revealed to be a pretty decent guy in the real world. The reveal with Claire's mother implies that every person Duke encounters is just a demon playing a role in his torment.