Viola (Gabriella Wright) and Nicola (Bret Roberts) are a husband-and-wife going through a difficult time in the Artsploitation Films indie horror release The Perfect Husband, in which the unexpected termination of Viola's pregnancy puts a strain on their marriage and so they decided to spend a weekend in a family cottage. While the weekend is intended as a romantic getaway, it quickly becomes anything but romantic as seething suspicions, maddening paranoia and blind rage explodes all around them in this English language film from Italian filmmaker Lucas Pavetto based upon his own short film. 

The Blu-ray includes Pavetto's short film, a behind-the-scenes featurette and Artsploitation trailers. If you're familiar with the Philly-based Artsploitation, then you already know that you should expect a whole lot more films a lot like this one. 

The Perfect Husband experienced quite a bit of success on the indie horror fest circuit including prizes at the Philadelphia Independent Film Festival (Best Horror Feature), Rincon International Film Festival (Excellence Award, Narrative Feature), Macabre Faire Film Festival (Best Sound, Best Editing - Feature Film), TrindieFest (Best Horror), Nuremberg's Weekend of Fear (Best Film), and FantaFestival (Best First Work) along with multiple other nominations and screenings. 

For those who embrace the whole torture porn scene, The Perfect Husband is likely to be quite up your alley. While that's not quite to my taste, it's likely that Pavetto landed pretty darn close to the vibe he was aiming for here. There's some mildly interesting twists in everything that unfolds here, though it's less a devotion to actual story and more just an opportunity to toss in more carnage. 

The Perfect Husband starts off rather slowly, sort of a slow-building tension with action that doesn't really kick into high gear until about 45-50 minutes into the film. When it does, it really does. For those into the ultra gore, I must say that the film's twisty finale actually convinced me to give it a mild recommendation, hence the + on that "C" rating, and for that alone I'll give it a modest thumbs up.

For more information on the film, visit the Artsploitation Films website linked to in the credits. 

© Written by Richard Propes
The Independent Critic