Today, he's the Western whisperer. But Yellowstone creator Taylor Sheridan made his directorial debut with 2011's Vile, a little-seen horror movie about a group of friends kidnapped for a sadistic purpose. It's an R-rated, gross-out flick in the style of Saw or the even worse Hostel. If you've got the stomach for such monstrosities, you'll spot a couple of Yellowstone favorites among the cast.
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Vile follows a group of twenty-somethings who pick up a hitchhiking woman (always a mistake) and find themselves locked in a house together with 22 hours to escape. Their captor has implanted vials at the base of their skulls designed to collect adrenaline, dopamine and oxytocin — you know, chemicals produced by extreme pain. The unlucky test subjects must, ahem, work together to fill these vials with enough of the good stuff to win their release, or else be trapped inside the home forevermore.
Tony-Seven Films/Vile Entertainment
Sheridan directed Vile (which, believe it or not, had a wide theatrical release in the U.S.) just after leaving Sons of Anarchy. As he tells it, Vile was merely a favor for a friend (likely co-writer and producer Beck). He considers the critically-acclaimed Wind River, which he wrote and directed, his true first feature film:
"A friend of mine raised — I don't know what he raised — 20 grand or something, and cast his buddies, and wrote this bad horror movie that I told him not to direct," Sheridan told Rotten Tomatoes in 2017. "He was going to direct it and produce it, and he started and freaked out, and called and said, 'Can you help me?' I said, 'Yeah, I'll try.' I kind of kept the ship pointed straight, and they went off and edited, and did what they did. I think it's generous to call me the director. I think he was trying to say thank you, in some way. It was an excellent opportunity to point a camera and learn some lessons that actually benefited me on Wind River."
Unwatchable as it sounds, Vile provides a semi-interesting take on the whole torture porn thing that dominated horror movies well into the 2010s, until so-called smart horror (think The Witch and Hereditary) came along and elevated the genre. Lingering shots of human suffering pumps the audience with adrenaline, just as the characters do their worst to produce it. Their invisible captor is really the viewer, hungry for more of that gross titillation.
Vile's co-writer, producer and star Eric Jay Beck would go on to pen the acclaimed Yellowstone Season 2 finale, "Sins of the Father," which gave us that flashback to John Dutton Sr. Yellowstone veterans Ian Bohen (Ryan) and Rob Kirkland (Sheriff Ramsey) also play a couple of Vile's poor unfortunate souls. Other cast members include iconic horror face Maria Olsen (American Horror Story), Akeem Smith (The Glades), voice actor and Deadwood alum Greg Cipes and April Matson (who's appeared in a couple of Hallmark Christmas movies).
Currently juggling Special Ops: Lioness, the end of Yellowstone, another season of 1923, the upcoming Lawmen: Bass Reeves and a litany of still-untitled Yellowstone spinoffs, Taylor Sheridan's first movie is firmly a thing of the past. And that's probably for the best.
Stream Vile on Prime Video, Crackle, Tubi or Plex.
