The camera takes a long, slow pan up the body of an unconscious man lying in a hospital bed. At last, he awakens. The doctors don’t know who he is and he can’t say. Mute. Amnesiac. And with the help of a caring nurse, John Doe will begin a difficult — and violent — journey to uncover his painful past.

That’s the brief lowdown on Nathan Wrann‘s surprising indie thriller Burning Inside, embedded above. The film is a completely different take on the traditional revenge movie genre, kind of like Death Wish crossed with Eraserhead.

Although the film has a thoroughly modern approach to technique and storytelling, the black and white cinematography give it a classic noirish nudge as does the movie’s non-traditional pacing. While the revenge movie genre over the years has traditionally ramped up in gore, stunts and fast editing, Wrann has gone in the opposite direction with exceptionally long, low-key takes and the violence meted out in controlled, measured action.

This is a film that defies pretty much any expectation one has of a revenge thriller and, in doing so, Wrann has crafted a very dark and unsettling vision of one man’s downward spiral. My original, and much more detailed, review of the film can be read here.

For more on the film, please visit its official website, plus the blog of its director, Nathan Wrann.

Also, Wrann and Burning Inside‘s distributor, Channel Midnight, have been making an aggressive push to get the movie viewed online and on mobile devices since they’ve been locked out of traditional distribution routes, which is frequently the case for challenging, unique indie-produced films.

In addition to the above embed through the new service Dynamo Player — which allows for the charging of viewing a film that’s embedded on any webpage — Burning Inside has been released as an Amazon Instant Video rental and purchase, a YouTube rental, and a viewing app on iTunes. Regarding his experiences with web distribution, Wrann wrote this very intriguing blog post.

Burning Inside photo gallery: