Premiering today on Shudder, The Furies will also have its Australian premiere at MonsterFest before releasing in Australian cinemas from November 7.

In Greek mythology, The Furies were usually said to be three sisters of vengeance, sometimes referred to as infernal goddesses, who arose out of the, er, blood spilled on the earth by the castration of Uranus. The Iliad describes them as those who “take vengeance on men, whosoever hath sworn a false oath.” Often called crones, their appearance is mutable based on the writers, described with Medusa-like hair or blood-shot eyes or even wings and coal-black bodies. But my favorite description says: “In their hands they carry brass-studded scourges, and their victims die in torment.”

Basically, no matter how you slice it, they are the kind of badass bitches that you don’t want to fuck with.

The Furies begin with very little context and setup. “Fuck Patriarchy,” Maddie (Ebony Vagulans) tags a wall while Kayla (Airlie Dodds) watches on nervously. It’s the typical dynamic between the two, with Maddie sometimes feeling like a babysitter for the meek Kayla. An argument erupts out of nowhere between them and almost seems poised to doom their friendship, until they are both knocked unconscious.

Kayla is forcibly awakened when a red light blasts waves of pain through her head and she finds herself in a black box in the middle of a forest of gnarly, knobby white trees in the middle of the Australian outback. Maddie is nowhere to be found and the only clue to her predicament is “Beauty 06” typed on the outside of the black box.

Neither Kayla nor the viewer have much time to react to the new situation as she quickly runs into Alice (Kaitlyn Boyé) and Sheena (Taylor Ferguson), two equally confused and scared women who have no memory of how they got there. The only thing they do know is that there are more women lost in the Australian wilderness, including Maddie. Most concerning, though, are the other empty black boxes they find with the word “beast” typed on them. They realize they’re being stalked by a group of horrifyingly mask-clad men with names like RotFace & PigFace and BabyFace, all who carry a range of nasty weapons.

But there’s something else going on, Kayla discovers, after being chased by one of the monstrous killers before being semi-saved by another mask and weapon-wielding man. Additionally, she Kayla keeps getting these weird flashes where she can see through the killers’ eyes. Mysteries continue to unfold as Kayla races to find Maddie, while navigating tenuous and constantly changing alliances, in hopes to survive the horrific game of cat-and-mouse she’s been forced to play.

The Furies is lean and mean…emphasis on the mean. It wastes no time getting into the thick of the action and the opening is a dizzying mix of little exposition—Kayla suffers from epilepsy, her friend Maddie has spent her life babysitting her—and compounding mysteries. The narrative unbalances the viewer by constantly shifting expectations and twisting the story in fantastic ways. It’s an efficient thriller that’s less concerned with character development than it is putting its characters through an unrelenting and hellish gauntlet of terrors.

Written and directed by Tony D’Aquino, the narrative just books from bloody encounter to bloody encounter, doling out bits of the narrative with each burst of violence. Special attention must be brought to the stunning practical effects and prosthetic work, hailing from individuals (Rachel Scane and Larry Van Duynhoven who’ve worked on Cargo and Upgrade and a makeup coordinator (Sheldon Wade) who has worked on Mad Max: Fury Road and a whole litany of others, including The Matrix.

In other words, the team is top notch.

The effects they manage to achieve are cringe-inducing queasiness at its finest and reminds me just how intimate and gnarly practical effects can be when created by professionals. There’s a moment early in the film involving a hatchet to a face that was absolutely horrific and brutal. They manage to paint the sets with visceral red with all sorts of eye trauma, head trauma, face trauma…this movie has a lot of bloody trauma, okay?

On the surface, meek Kayla may seem as far removed from the Greek definitions of The Furies. And if there’s any character growth in the film, it’s about her ability to rise up on her own and stand on her own two feet in the face of adversity. The narrative does a fantastic job of conflating her relationship with Maddie to her newfound relationship with Rose (Linda Ngo). Rose has reverted to an almost catatonic, child-like state from the trauma of the situation and Kayla finds herself taking on Maddie’s protective influence with her. It’s an interesting role reversal that pays off in spades with an absolutely shocking moment that had me gaping at the audacity of it.

But mostly, it’s about the hellish horror of her situation. The Beauty and the Beast motif isn’t the most developed, though the twists between the hunter and the huntee is executed incredibly well and constantly changes perspectives. The denouement feels a bit rushed, but paints the preceding lean 80 minutes in a completely different light and opens the world a bit. It works as a self-contained story but I’d love to see where it would go next. I absolutely loved this movie and it is another obvious win for Shudder.

Thrilling, tense and lacking pretense, The Furies is an anti-patriarchy thriller worth visiting.