DON'T GO DOWN...

This issue, the mercenary Martin Unsworth gets his head mashed by Tom Paton’s THE ASCENT…

- Tom Paton

Writer/director Tom Paton has been making a name for himself over the years. His latest project, G-LOC is featured within these very pages. But we want to take you back to his production of 2019, The Ascent. Originally premiered at FrightFest as Stairs, it’s also gone by the name of Black Ops in some territories. None of the titles really depict how much of a mind-fuck the film is, however.

The action begins with a group of eight special ops mercenaries, dubbed the Hell’s Bastards, tasked with recovering intelligence from an undisclosed camp in the midst of a foreign civil war. Something that they should not be interfering with. Their orders are to kill everyone in the camp, but Jack (Toby Osmond) and Kia (Samantha Schnitzler) discover that there’s a bound and gagged civilian (Julia Szamalek) in one of the tents. Obviously scared, she bites off the tip of Jack’s finger (there’s no big special effects required here since Osmond misses that digit already). Enraged that there’s someone still living, the highest ranking officer, Will (former winner of The X-Factor and Coronation Street star Shayne Ward), plagued by regrets of a past mission where he made the wrong decision, pulls his gun on Kia and orders her to execute her. Against her better judgment and compassion, Kia obliges. Not before the Polish prisoner can utter ominously, “Don’t go down”.