A Serbian Film (2010)

"Imagine you were a psycho-analyst and Serbia waltzed into your office demanding a consultation. Uh-oh..."

I was told that A Serbian Film featured unspeakable acts that pushed the envelope farther than I could ever imagine. I was told it would fuck my senses and rape my soul. And by God, it did. And I'm not the squeamish type, nor did I squirm during the film. Nonetheless, it left me with images that will haunt my dreams forever, images that have already started to disturb my perception of reality. You see, there were things I wouldn't have expected from even the most depraved genre filmmaker and this film showed them to me without flinching. I guess I underestimated how twisted the Serbian soul really was...

In a dark warehouse lies a mattress surrounded by cameras. On the mattress, the unconscious body of a cute young boy is wrapped in sheets so that only his ass is showing. Then, in a demented, drug-fueled frenzy, his father crouches behind him and proceeds to savagely rape him. At first, the father has some difficulty inserting his gigantic porn star penis in his son's virginal anus. So he pushes, pushes... and pushes, until the sound of tearing flesh fills the theater, leaving the audience in the awkward position of estimating the damage done to the young man. With that awful sound of tearing flesh, we are reminded of the famous rape scene from Irreversible. That latter scene now appears way softer because no matter how repulsive it was to see the gorgeous Monica Bellucci succumb to a low-life scumbag, we somehow felt that she could handle the trauma, or at least, that she understood what was happening to her. After all, we're talking about a full-grown woman here, a voluptuous woman at that, one with an anal passage of regular width. As for the kid from A Serbian Film... let's just say that we aren't suprised that he remains pale and mute for the entire final act.

"Pain and pleasure... indivisible": this time they mean it.

And even this, this repulsive father-son rape is almost enjoyable compared to what we witness in a previous scene of the film: a monstrous act likely to infiltrate your head like the worst of migraines and certainly something you will never forget. A newborn... raped by a fat ex-soldier who actually delivers it right before submitting it to the worst abuse ever. The new mother lies there on a stainless steel table, grinning at the sight of her baby being used as a flesh mitt. The baby's cries are ghastly. The tighter the asshole, the bigger the pain, I guess... After the film, I called a friend to see if he was coming for the late-night showing of Re-Animator. Annoyed by the fact that he decided to sit it out, I left him with the comforting idea of newborn porn. "The guy actually delivers the baby, and rapes it right afterwards", I told him. He sounded repulsed, then asked: "Was it in a war context?" "No", I replied, "sick porn context". He then gave me a truly heart-felt "yuck", and so I wished him goodnight. What this goes to show is that we can only make senses of the atrocities contained in A Serbian Film in the light of war. For the film is after all a very primitive cry from the depths of a very broken mind, forever stigmatized by war. But it is packaged in such a way as to be immediately intelligible and involving for us, North-Americans who know nothing of war. Thanks to the common ground provided by genre cinema, we can thus walk the traumatized landscapes of the Serbian psyche with relative ease and the prospect of unspeakable horror becomes all the more realistic.

As its title suggests, A Serbian Film is all about the collective Serbian unconscious, and believe me, this is one of the darkest place where you will ever venture. It is a place where even beautiful things such as sex and family are undermined by a dark current of death and hatred, a place that exhibits the scars of war as perpetual reminders of an inner monstrosity that will forever jeopardize normal existence. Almost everything in the film functions on an unconscious level, or at least in some altered state of being that lies beneath the surface of a world that has apparently regained some sense of order. This is made abundantly clear by the varying quality of film stock used to film different degrees of reality, by the use of flashbacks and drug-induced fantasies, all of which suggest that there is something disturbing but very much alive living under the surface.

Protagonist Milos begins the film as a retired porn star who shares his life with a lovely, motherly translator and their beautiful blond son. On the surface, he seems to be living a normal life in a normal household. Of course, his professional past is tacked onto him and the signs of his alcoholism are scattered around his house, but we initially see those only as exposition devices, not as signs of a darker self ready to awaken. The film opens on a scene from a low-budget, 70s style porno entitled "Milos, the Dirty Stud" starring a much younger protagonist. This is normal porn, the kind of porn average guys jerk off to. A little violent maybe, but playful overall and featuring joyful sex that appears pleasing to the woman. Watching the film in a lush, well furnished living room is the wide-eyed son of Milos. Right off the bat, we are thus confronted by two levels of reality: the cheaply-shot, badly-acted, and shady "flashback" of Milos' past life and his present life, shot on pristine 35 mm stock in gorgeously detailed interiors. Under the apparently normal, even luxurious life of the Serbian protagonist, there lies a dark secret that is bound to taint the next generation through mediatic representation. The dark, tormented memories of Serbia are almost like the porno tapes hidden in the father's library: they are bound to be discovered by a curious son. Then, they can be explained in mundane terms so as to spare the child's feelings, but prevent further investigation at the same time. Unfortunately, no matter how hard you try to conceal them, those memories will never really go away. They're an integral part of Serbian life...

Later in the film, after many trials and tribulations with mad artist and current employer Vikmur, Milos wakes up badly bruised and pissing blood. Upon looking at his alarm clock, he realizes that he has black-outed for two days. The only things he is left with are fragmented memories of his bloodied wife wielding a knife at him and other such horrors. Slowly, he begins piecing up the puzzle and finding proof of further atrocities through the material shot by Vikmur on DV. He also revisits the places where those atrocities took place and remembers even more. Thus, through a series of modular mises-en-abîmes (flashbacks, DV tapes, and on-site traces), the protagonist realizes the full extent of his monstrosity. By accepting the offer made by Vikmur (who only promised reality), Milos effectively decided to stare into the abyss. And guess what the abyss did.

This poster cannot fail to remind us of the Cronenbergian maieutics,
a process amply illustrated in his filmography by the symbol of the
broken head.

As far as mises-en-abîmes, there's an argument to be made for the poster of the film, since it contributes so much to the metaphor of the collective unconscious. It shows the bored face of Milos in a uniform grey, but this face is broken to show the other face of Milos, a redenned face distorted by a sadistic grin. This is the hidden face of Serbia, but also a typically Cronenbergian motif. Behind the boring facade of the bourgeoisie, there is a dark, visceral humanity ready to awaken. Be them hatred, rage, lust, sadism, these are not at all inhuman traits but profoundly human ones. Sadly, A Serbian Film is not about the loss of humanity, but the recovery thereof. The recovery of deeply-seeded feelings and thoughts, things that can't and shouldn't be forgotten. Because the problem is precisely the deeply human nature of war, and genocide. Of course, there is always some kind of exterior incentive to provoke those feelings. It can be nationalism, or in this case, drugs. But in the end it doesn't matter because the butchers butcher only out of human emotion. Milos is handed a machete, but he is not told to chop off the head of the actress kneeling in front of him. He does so because he feels like it. Deep inside of him. He did not think either before he anally penetrated his son. No. He just did it because an asshole was in front of him while he was erect. Late in the film, Vikmur basically tells Milos: "If it gives you a hard-on, you should do it". In other words, you should follow your reptilian instincts because they are the only real aspects of the self. Most people can become animals at the first chance they get. But most people are not offered the chance to freely murder out of spite. And this is why A Serbian Film is so important. Because it shows you what people are willing to do for their own pleasure, but under the illusion of a grander purpose. I mean, if you were put in a room with four sixteen years-old runaways and told you got do anything you liked with them, would you listen to your cock? If told you could kill your annoying neighbor and fuck his lovely wife in all impunity, would you do it? If promised a thousand virgins, would you fly a plane into the World Trade Center? Why do guys like to fuck virgins anyways? Is it because they want to go where no man has gone before or because they like tight pussies? Pushed to the extreme, either one of these reasons could justify newborn rape. So it is all a question of context. But what's important, and disturbing, is that social order can only go so far to repress our basic instincts, which will arise at the first opportunity. And this is all particularly relevant to Serbia. And to Yugoslavia in general. Because people there have witnessed firsthand what humans are capable of when given extreme latitude. They have seen families united in death and babies crucified on doors whereas we have only seen as far as the Internet allows. We have channeled our violence into the passive spectatorship of many eclectic things: sports, world news, but most of all, genre films. And by using the many facets of the genre film, A Serbian Film brilliantly confronts us with our own brand of violence. Being pornographic in nature (but not hardcore, thankfully), the film also questions our relation to pornography and the extremes (pedophilic and violent) to where we would eventually want it to go.

But even smarter than all this confrontational symbolism is how the director contains his horrendous story within the comforting familiarity of the thriller genre. Thanks to ample foreshadowing and very predictable plot twists, it is possible to anticipate events at every turn. Which is to say that everybody in the theater could easily envision the ending way before it actually happened. But what's interesting is that they all decided to stay, they all wanted to see Milos rape his wife and son. As far as the experience goes, watching A Serbian Film is akin to seeing Michael Haneke's Funny Games through to the end despite the intimate knowledge of its catastrophic ending, which happens very early in the film. Bluntly put, it is only desire which keeps us glued to our seat. Just like it is desire who made Milos kill and rape. Any other explanation is just wishful thinking. And as an audience, we fully realize this fact. Because as much as we want Vikmur and his minions to suffer a gory demise, we quickly realize that this very desire makes us no better than the killers. In the theater, there were wild applause when Milos assaulted Vikmur and smashed his head against the concrete floor, as is standard during shows at Fantasia. However, the theater soon became silent as more and more villains were brutally slaughtered, one of which through the rape of his eye socket. This kind of violence is so repulsive that it makes us unable to cheer. And at that point, we cannot fail to understand our own involvement in the film. It may be passive at first, but it becomes tangible as soon as Vikmur's head hits the concrete. We thus recognize our blood-thirst for what it really is: the basest human reaction to the atrocities in front of us. The seed that grew and blossomed in each war criminal.

In closing, a few words about penises... and the action genre. Considering the incredible amount of murders by cocks contained in the film (three, if I'm not mistaken: an eye-socket rape/murder, cock-choking, and the implicit rape/murder of the newborn), we could very well make a feminist argument for the film. In here, penises are very clearly equated to weapons. It is not a coincidence then, that the protagonist is an ex-porn star whose large member has the ability to rise or fall at will. This makes him the perfect soldier for the army built by demented artist Vikmur, who wishes to use this penis to hurt and humiliate his victims. Such a metaphor works surprisingly well, not as a simple critique of pornography (which might be the most simplistic reading of the film) but as a tie-in between the humiliation, domination and suffering caused by Serbian weapons (guns and knives who are phallic in nature and usually wielded by male soldiers) and the actual rapes that took place during the war. Sort of a twister of guilty war memories designed to exorcise the inner demons of the nation. In this film, penises kill... literally. As they did metaphorically during the war. But what's more is that those penises are also the phallic weapons of action films. Think about it. You've got this retired champion (of porn) turned alcoholic who wishes he could go back to his days of glory. Suddenly, he is offered a lucrative gig (by a freaky crazy guy) with which he can a) pay the bills, and b) regain his self-respect. So he goes into training, jogging away like the old Rocky Balboa, and practicing his erections, getting ready for battle. This is actually done in a little montage that you'd swear had come out of any North American sports film. That's the hook. The very familiar come-back story. It's Rocky preparing to go against Mason Dixon, and delight us with all his manly prowess. Then, the film basically shifts to the thriller genre, in which penises are also weapons. Murder weapons. And now, you have to wonder: "Whose cock is it which is chocking Milos' old girlfriend?" and "Has Milos really raped his family to death?". When you think about it, the main instruments of violence in the film are cocks. Plain and simple. Personnally, I saw a noticeable decrease in the quality and quantity of my erections in the few weeks following the film. It was as if I had suddenly found myself walking around with an assault rifle in my pants, the baby-raping kind of assault rifles... I even got to thinking that I had lost my masculinity for good. That's the kind of effect you can expect A Serbian Film to have on over-sensible, intellectually-confused, and terminally wimpy feminists such as myself.

See mad artist Vikmur. Now, imagine him fatter, with white hair and no mustache...

All in all, A Serbian Film is not for everyone, espectially not for those who would pretend that our world is fine or that life is beautiful. It is the kind of film that pleases its audience just as the revelation of disturbing childhood memories would please a shrink or a blood-splattered murder scene would please a criminologist. It is a a disgusting trace of bitter memories that just won't , nor should fade from memory. I can hardly tag the film as entertaining, but I can't deny its intelligence and relevance either. For me, there is something that always seemed clear: people don't care about anything except themselves. They will forever ignore the pain of others until they are personnally involved in it. People can only be awakened, it seems, when punched in the face. Then, and only then, do you have their attention. The fact that A Serbian Film was the talk of the festival is a good thing as it should awaken movie-goers to the more atrocious aspects of human sensibility as well as enable them to question the nature of their gutsy enjoyment of violence as a typically human reaction. You may like or dislike the film, you may see the brilliant and complex thriller I saw or you may just see a stinking pile of exploitative garbage, but no matter what your opinion is, you're unlikely to stay indifferent. And that's exactly what Spasojevic wanted. And he did a damn good job of making sure. Well done, brother!

****
The film's brilliant use of mises-en-abîmes makes it a great narrative effort while its extreme imagery makes it a relevant document pertaining to the Serbian soul. A true knock-out punch of a film.

Final Destination (2000)

Review #0053

First, I saw Final Destination 2, which featured a memorable opening accident, fun gory kills and half a brain. It was a great stoner's movie. Then I saw The Final Destination (see review here), which also featured a great opening accident and a few fun kills. But for me, it was too much. I really didn't need such a film, especially if you consider the extra bucks I had to pay for a mostly uninteresting transition to 3D. Finally, after denying many bargain bin copies a home, I finally picked up the original, thinking there just might be something to it, something to warrant a whopping three sequels , all of which shared almost exactly the same plotline.

Did I find a solid basis for the series? No. I found instead an intriguing, but flawed offering that shares virtually all of the sequels' weaknesses, including a criminally poor "surprise" ending that ultimately defuses the whole thing and leaves the viewer totally unfulfilled. Interestingly enough, this ending is virtually identical to that of #4, which really makes you wonder how many Final Destination films were needed considering how unwilling the filmmakers working on those sequels were to update the under-developed premise of the original.

Uh-oh... We're toast!

As I said earlier, Final Destination is an intriguing but ultimately lazy film that fails to really capitalize on clever basic ideas. The opening sequence is simple and effective, showing us the inevitability of death through the perpetual motion of the fan in the protagonist's room. Then a smooth, albeit a little clumsy exposition scene introduces us to a classroom full of typical high schoolers boarding a plane headed for Paris. What the carefree youths ignore is that they are all supposed to die on that plane, according to "Death's design", which remains a hazy narrative device throughout the film. Fortunately, thanks to a highly dubious "out of body" experience through which the protagonist can foresee the tragedy, he manages to prevent a group of peers from boarding (and thus dying). But what he eventually comes to realize is that you cannot really cheat death, for the Reaper will necessarily come back to claim his due. When later exposed to a diagram showing the route of the faulty fuel line that caused the plane explosion, he manages to figure out the "order" in which the survivors will be reclaimed. Left with no alternative, the viewer is forced to believe such "rules" that keep popping up as cement to build a believable plotline out of a strand of shallow gimmicks clumsily tacked together. Truth is the key "premonition" scene, which is repeated in various forms in all of the sequels, is technically flawless, a lesson in tension-building thanks to awesome editing. Only trouble is the film goes downhill from there, thanks to increasingly lame plot twists, paramount of which is the exemplary bad ending.

The main flaw here is the total absence of a reason why the protagonist is allowed to foresee the accident, and save some characters but not others. Had he been saved by a "higher power", wouldn't it seem fair that this "higher power" have some kind of motive for such an intervention? Maybe we're expected to believe that this is merely the latest of God's elaborate pranks... At any rate, it seems pretty slippery to discuss the mechanisms of life and death so brazenly while dismissing all spiritual elements regarding fate and purpose. Personnally, I really wished there would've been some kind of lesson here. Hell, even Saw's dubious sense of morality had some relevance to the story. Here, every plot point is as superficial as can be, being a mere gimmick that fuels the story a few scenes. And every time the possibility of a grander scheme surfaces, it is swiftly drowned by the very narrow needs of the scenario. For one, I thought the funeral sequence held some special significance regarding the fate of the survivors. I felt it was the moment for those characters to ponder on the meaning of their existence and the incredible chance they have been given. It was a chance to include some meatier statement about life than "I'm freaked out to be alive." Instead of that, this scene functions merely as a half-assed segway toward the next scene wherein the first survivor dies. Later, when Kerr Smith's character decides to face death head-on as he drives on the wrong side of a one-way street, you'd expect some statement about individual volition in the face of fate. But no such reflexion ever comes to fruition as all the characters are mere cogwheels in a sick play whose conclusion is predetermined. And in the end, we discover that death is no different than a typical slasher, caught also in the web of teenage-oriented ineptitude dished out by lazy screenwriters out to make an easy buck. It's a shame too, because so many important spiritual issues are thus ignored, and what could have been a serious, adult film ultimately fails to tackle real issues that could've been relevant to real people, and so it remains a juvenile and superficial effort in body count horror.

Sexy Ali Larter, Devon Sawa and Kerr Smith stare death right in the face.

To summarize things, Final Destination is ultimately just a lowbrow teenage slasher. The unique, intriguing premise and mythological implications about death are soon revealed for what they are: mere plot twists that offer surprise, but no catharsis. The result is very disappointing, not because the film is that bad, but because of how the filmmakers fail to follow through on the film's intriguing premise and its promise of grander, deeper dramatic implications. Of all the angles from which to adress the arduous, and quite necessary question of Death's design, they took the least interesting one, that of the cheap thriller. It's a real shame. And in the end, I will suggest you watch Part 2 instead, which is basically the same thing, but without the ridiculous pretension of being serious horror. And by the way, naming your characters after famous boogeymen and horror movie producers does nothing but prove that one can read theater marquees...


2/5 A unique and influential scenario is marred by unsatisfying plot twists and an overall lack of substance.

REVIEWED FILMS (BY RATING)

Affreux, sales et méchants (1976)
Dawn of the Dead (1978)
Profound Desires of the Gods (1968)
Suspiria (1977)
The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974)







Black Swan (2010)
I Saw the Devil (2010)
Possession (1981)
Postman Blues (1997)
Se7en (1995)







The Ambassador (2011)
Amer (2009)
Another Earth (2011)
August Underground (2001)
Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon (2006)
The Blood on Satan's Claw (1971)
Candyman (1992)
Cannibal Holocaust (1980)
The Fly (1986)
Haute Tension (2003)
In My Skin (2002)
A Letter to Momo (2011)
Massacre Gun (1967)
Samurai Cop (1989)
A Serbian Film (2010)
Tokyo Fist (1995)
Urotsukidôji: Legend of the Overfiend (1989)
Zombie (1979)







American Mary (2012)
Animals (2012)
Beyond the Black Rainbow (2010)
The Dark Hours (2005)
Deadgirl (2008)
Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame (2010)
Dragon (2011)
Drug War (2013)
Hellboy II: The Golden Army (2008)
Hellraiser (1987)
House on the Edge of the Park (1980)
L'hypothèse du Mokélé-Mbembé (2011)
The Mist (2007)
Mistaken for Strangers (2013)
Monsters (2010)
[Rec] (2007)
Scream (1996)
Scream 2 (1997)
Splice (2010)
Street Trash (1987)
Super (2010)
The Thing (1982)
Toad Road (2012)
X - The Man With X-Ray Eyes (1963)
You Are Here (2010)
You Are the Apple of My Eye (2011)
Young Gun in the Time (2012)







L'amour braque (1985)
Antichrist (2009)
Bad Milo (2013)
Black Pond (2011)
Black's Game (2012)
The Blob (1988)
Bounty Killer (2013)
The Burning Buddha Man (2013)
Cold Sweat (2010)
Dead End (2003)
Doomsdays (2013)
Dr. Jeckyll and Mr. Hyde (1920)
Drag Me to Hell (2009)
Frankenstein's Bloody Nightmare (2006)
Grave Encounters (2011)
Gyo: Tokyo Fish Attack (2012)
The Haunting of Julia (1977)
The Hills Have Eyes (1977)
Hobo with a Shotgun (2011)
Jeepers Creepers II (2003)
Lord of Illusions (1995)
Lowlife (2012)
Metro Manila (2013)
Neighborhood Watch (2005)
Number 10 Blues/Goodbye Saigon (1975-2013)
The Pact (2012)
Pinocchio 964 (1991)
Piranha (1978)
Piranha (2010)
Rabies (2011)
Revenge: A Love Story (2010)
Rocky Balboa (2006)
Ronal the Barbarian (2011)
Rubber's Lover (1996)
Les sept jours du talion (2010)
Shadow of the Vampire (2000)
Sleepaway Camp (1983)
Some Guy who Kills People (2011)
The Stuff (1985)
Szamanka (1996)
Tokyo Gore Police (2008)
Uzumaki (2000)
World War Z (2013)







Absentia (2011)
All Night Long 2: Atrocity (1995)
Contagion (2011)
Contamination (1980)
The Funhouse (1981)
Damien: Omen II (1978)
Ginger Snaps (2000)
Grace (2009)
Halloween III: Season of the Witch (1982)
Helldriver (2010)
Hellraiser: Inferno (2000)
The Human Centipede (First Sequence) (2009)
Knifepoint (2011)
Midnight Son (2011)
Mondomanila (2011)
Monster (Humanoids from the Deep) (1980)
Mutants (2009)
Nakedness Which Wants to Die Too Much (2012)
The Perfect Host (2010)
Raze (2013)
Red Room 2 (2000)
Resolution (2012)
Reykjavik Whale Watching Massacre (2009)
Robo-G (2012)
Saint-Martyrs-des-Damnés (2005)
Saw VI (2009)
The Tall Man (2012)
Troll 2 (1990)
Zero Charisma (2013)
Zombie 108 (2012)







28 Weeks Later (2007)
Arjun: The Warrior Prince (2012)
Baise-moi (2000)
Big Ass Spider! (2013)
The Burning (1981)
Chopping Mall (1986)
Curse of Chucky (2013)
Deep Blue Sea (1999)
Deep Rising (1998)
Final Destination (2000)
The Final Destination (2009)
Gag (2006)
Guinea Pig 2: Flower of Flesh and Blood (1985)
Header (2006)
Hellbound: Hellraiser II (1988)
Hellraiser III: Hell on Earth (1992)
Lesson of the Evil (2012)
Love (2011)
Macabre (2009)
Mega Monster Battle: Ultra Galaxy Legend - The Movie (2009)
Motel Hell (1980)
Needful Things (1993)
A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors (1987)
Robocop (2014)
Schoolgirl Apocalypse (2011)
Scream 3 (2000)
Uzumasa Jacopetti (2013)
The Whisperer in Darkness (2011)







À l'intérieur (2007)
Anthropophagus (2010)
Art of the Devil (2004)
The Cabin in the Woods (2012)
Chop (2010)
Commando: One Man Army (2013)
Dante 01 (2008)
Fists of the White Lotus (1980)
George A. Romero's Survival of the Dead (2009)
Guinea Pig 5: Android of Notre Dame (1989)
Hellraiser: Bloodline (1996)
Hemorrhage (2012)
House (1986)
The Killing of America (1982)
Let's-Make-The-Teacher-Have-A-Miscarriage Club (2010)
Lifeforce (1988)
Neverlost (2010)
A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master (1988)
The Unborn (2009)







Children of the Corn (1984)
The Dead Experiment (2013)
The Dirties (2013)
Friday the 13th Part III (1982)
H6: Diary of a Serial Killer (2005)
Hatchet (2006)
The Hills Have Eyes (2006)
Horny House of Horror (2010)
House of the Dead (2003)
I Spit on Your Grave (2010)
Inbred (2011)
A Nightmare on Elm Street Part 2: Freddy's Revenge (1985)
Red State (2011)
Thanatomorphose (2012)
The Victim (2011)







Devil (2010)
The FP (2011)
Friday the 13th: A New Beginning (1985)
Memory of the Dead (2011)
Return to Nuke 'em High - Volume 1 (2013)
The Stepfather (2009)
Up in the Air (2009)








A Night of Nightmares (2012)
Fateful Findings (2013)


CAPSULE REVIEWS
Attack the Block (2011)
Bangkok Knockout (2011)
Bas-fonds (2010)
Battle Royale (2000)
Brawler (2011)
Bullhead (2011)
Burke and Hare (2010)
The Catechism Cataclysm (2011)
Clown: The Movie (2010)
Death Weekend (1976)
Dharma Guns (La succession Starkov) (2010)
The Devil's Rock (2011)
The Divide (2011)
Don't Go Breaking My Heart (2011)
Exit (2012)
Frankenstein 2000 aka The Vindicator (1986)
Frankenstein Created Woman (1967)
Un génie, deux associés, une cloche (1975)
A Horrible Way to Die (2010)
Hollow (2011)
Ilsa: She Wolf of the SS (1975)
Invasion of Alien Bikini (2011)
Ip Man: The Legend Is Born (2010)
Ironclad (2011)
Kidnapped (2010)
Kill Me Please (2010)
Lapland Odyssey (2010)
Last Days Here (2011)
Little Deaths (2011)
A Lonely Place to Die (2011)
Marianne (2011)
Monster Brawl (2011)
One Hundred Years of Evil (2010)
Panique (1977)
The Phantom of the Opera (1925)
Pop Skull (2007)
Redline (2009)
The Reef (2010)
Retreat (2011)
Saint (2010)
The Silence (2010)
El Sol (2009)
Stake Land (2010)
Superheroes (2011)
Surviving Life (2010)
Tomie: Unlimited (2011)
Troll Hunter (2010)
True Legend (2010)
Urban Explorer (2011)
Vampire (2011)
Victims (2011)
Wake in Fright (1971)
Wasted on the Young (2010)
What Fun We Were Having: 4 Stories about Date Rape (2011)
The Wicker Man (1973)
The Wicker Tree (2010)
The Woman (2011)


TEXTS AND ESSAYS

Revenge of the Phallic Woman

A feminist exposé on the shortcomings of psychoanalytical theory in formulating a relevant critique of David Cronenberg's Rabid (1977).

Elusive Terrors - Horror Films and the Moving Frame

A study of the moving camera aesthetics in Suspiria (1977), Predator (1987) and The Evil Dead II (1987). Probably got an A+ for this one.

The Cronenbergian Maieutics
A study of David Cronenberg's filmography focusing on his recurrent exploration and uncanny depiction of man's most visceral instincts. Probably got an A+ for this one.

Hyperopic Worlds
A personal, and frankly whiny exploration of my childhood infatuation with horror cinema.

The Ghoul Report: An Introduction
A short introduction in which I set myself some strenuous objectives that I managed to achieve only in my most demented moments of inspiration.

Deep Rising (1998)

Review #0052

"Chinese machine guns. Rampaging seafood. Anybody ordered kraken Fu-Yung?"

Deep Rising is a film I've wanted to see ever since it came out, me being a sucker for both derelict-set films and tentacled monsters. Trouble is, I was put off at the time by the er... lukewarm reviews, so I steered clear and let it disappear beyond the horizon, knowing we were bound to meet again in a bargain bin some years later. My aching heart was finally healed last weekend when I picked up a VHS copy for 50 cents, which is basically the amount I had set out to spend on the film back in 1998. Having now seen it, I can confess that it was pretty much the generic Alien clone I had been warned against, but with somewhat of a flair for monster aesthetics. Is that enough to recommend the film? I'll let you decide...

The premise is simple enough: heavily armed pirates wish to loot a luxurious cruise ship sailing south of China, but they are beaten to the punch by a massive sea monster from the deep, hence the title. The tables are turned, and the hunters become the hunted. Armed with state-of-the-art Chinese machine guns (some special treats for gun nuts), the wise-cracking goons try their best to fend off what first appears to be a swarm of submerged predators. When these "predators" are revealed to be mere appendixes of a much larger creature, the film branches toward the familiar route of survivalist horror and what little suspense was lingering in the air dissipates. The tradeoff is worthwhile however, since the creature revealed is simply gorgeous. It can best be described as an early CGI kraken with teeth-filled tentacles that absorb their preys and "drink them alive", thus allowing for lenghty moments of human agony and a nice variety of liquified corpses lying around the scenery. Once revealed, the monster starts attacking by squirming through narrow corridors and loudly banging on walls, picking off the characters one by one, until the obvious survivors devise a way to escape from the mess, doing various stunts and surviving various explosions in the process. It's all mindless entertainment that offers no surprises. The dialogues are okay despite the generic characterization that plagues almost all pirate films, and charismatic leads TreatWilliams and Famke Jenssen are right at home in their roles. But in the the end, the monster is by far the film's main asset, which makes sense considering the few narrative possibilities offered by the premise.

In the end, it's just a question of whether your love for machine guns and tentacles can outweigh your discrimination in matters of generic survivalist scenarios. To try to settle this age-old dilemma, I will say this: blasés genre freaks such as myself should steer clear altogether, while neophytes might get a kick out of such a rare race-against-squirming-death film featuring primitve, but surprisingly effective monster CGI. And personal appreciation aside, I'm sure Deep Rising would make an awesome date movie as long as one can successfully convert the squirming onscreen into female squirming...

2/5 (Very) generic film is kept afloat by an awesome beastie (and awesome machine guns).

Up in the Air (2009)

Review #0051

Foreword: Up in the Air is certainly not a horror film. Yet, I felt so strongly against it that I needed to go against the grain with this review and try to unbalance the overwhelming critical appreciation of this weak bourgeois film.

I didn't know anything about Up in the Air before I went in to see it, except that it was Jason Reitman's follow-up to the marvelous Juno and an Academy Award prospect. Naively enough, I thought I was in for another uplifting comedy about life and humanity. Of course, I was suspicious about the airport setting, which is hardly a suitable background for a character-based story, but I didn't worry too much, considering the comic potential of George Clooney and half-hoping to see Ellen Page or Michael Cera pop out of the scenery and quip a soulful joke. Thing is, I should've acted on my hunch and steered clear of this infuriating mess. But then again, I never could've expected such a dreadful, shallow and flawed piece of filmmaking from director Reitman. That is, I couldn't have expected him to turn his vest in such a way as to virtually annihilite everything he had done with Juno.

Up in the Air is about a man, a despicable man with a back-stabbing rat's smile. A man whose job it is to fly around the country, firing various office workers in the stead of their respective bosses. Twisted enough? A man who enjoys what he does for a living, reveling in the cash he derives from what is essentially a non-job (i.e. an intermediary job that is basically useless), prancing around in fashionable Italian suits with an infuriating smile stuck to his rat's face, a man free of the slighest hint of ethical self-appraisal. And we're supposed to root for that guy, we the people? Is it me who's crazy or isn't the protagonist of a standard Hollywood film supposed to be sympathetic? Now, last time I checked, cinema was still a popular medium. And last time I checked, it was the average movie-going Joes who were getting fired from their jobs. Then why are we giving this threatened majority a bourgeois protagonist who is morally bankrupt, totally unproductive (from a realistic standpoint), and without any ties to anything remotely significant (such as family, friends, love or even a single anthropocentric setting)?

Personnally, I had to fire three people in my life, all three at the same time, and I can say without the shadow of a doubt that it was the single worst thing I ever did. Not because it gave my employees a chance to vent their frustrations on me, but because it broke my heart and made me feel like a monster. It wasn't my decision to fire them, it was my boss'. My role in this shady operation was that of a despicable yes-man, cleaning out some motherfucker's dirty laundry as if it were my own, not unlike that gloomy George Clooney character from Up in the Air. Both he and this former self of mine are pawns in a sick game of which they care only to see the chips right in front of them. Of the three puzzled guys in front of me at the time, one of them started crying, and he kept on doing so while I clumsily invoked bullshit arguments to justify what was basically a random, "let's make an example of them" firing. Call me weak, call me whatever you will, but my heart broke into bits when he finally extended his hand towards mine and said: "I hope to see you again... under more auspicious skies". So, when I see Clooney with a clear conscience, grinning a self-satisfied smile while depriving a family man of his livelihood, I feel like leaping across the screen and fuckin' mauling him! And I feel that anybody with half a conscience should share this feeling with me.

As if this weren't enough, we are also treated to the female counterpart of George Clooney's character, a boring plane traveler such as himself whom I am tempted to nominate as Most Unattractive Female Character of All Times (conveniently enough, she is played by Vera Farmiga...). The two of them meet in the lobby of an hotel, then take the film on a spiralling ride toward mediocrity. They exchange platitudes, then become enamored with each other's wallet (I'm not kidding!), have casual sex, exchange some more platitudes, then compare their "busy" schedules on some fashionable electronic agendas in order to fit in some more casual sex. Wow! Ain't love grand? Seriously, there are many more involving romances in any given soap opera. On the other hand, if you're one of those people for whom fidelity cards are a turn-on, then I promise you a big fat hard-on while you watch this painful, sorry display of what love has become at the threshold of the new millenium.

Narratively speaking, Clooney and Farmiga's "characters" are more like non-characters, or at the most, secondary characters. They have almost no background, no quirks, no personnality and no real ties to anybody in the diegetic world. They are merely savvy bullshitters (or sophism-spewing uglies), and thus are much closer to robots than to actual human beings, unlike Anna Kendrick's character who is much rounder, and able to show emotion. Making Kendrick's character secondary to Clooney's and Farmiga's is not just a little mistake, it's a major flaw that rattles the very foundations of the film. From where I stand, being a graduate film scholar, I can tell you this: the screenplay for Up in the Air would hardly get a passing grade in Screenwriting 101 on account of its unsympathetic, flat protagonist. Give it ten seconds of thought and rethink the film as a real Juno follow-up, with the young female as protagonist and the pathetic professional couple as cautionary entity. Then, and only then have you got an Oscar contender. But as it stands, Up in the Air is an offensive bourgeois film, the likes of which was reason for cinema to reinvent itself during the 1960s. Whereas Juno was a film about ordinary (middle-class) people dealing with real moral issues (regarding love, sharing and finding one's place within society), Up in the Air merely chronicles the adolescent antics of a robot who lives solely for a dream which is shallowest of all (collecting frequent flyer miles). This is pure futility, especially considering the drama that unfolds in the background, unnoticed by the legions of brainwashed Clooney fans.

Truth be told, Up in the Air's is really a poisonous stance on the current economic crisis, presenting it like a mild annoyance to bourgeois assholes and vastly underplaying the personal dramas of many tertiary characters who are rounder than Clooney's such as J.K. Simmons' who, after x years of loyal services to an ungrateful company is terminated and told by the outsider doing so that he is a loser! At that point, I hoped Simmons would leap over the table and puncture Clooney's jugular, which, to my most utter dismay, failed to materialize. That said, I can't count with my two hands the number of times I wished Clooney's character would suffer a gory demise, paramount of which is when he suavely brushes aside his responsibility in the murder of a black executive and returns to work with all the poise in the world. Surprisingly enough, Up in the Air seems like Reitman's disavowal of Juno's humanism. A case in point is the scene where Kendrick breaks down in tears in the middle of a hotel lobby. The two rotten fuckers accompanying her then exchange condescending glances, quietly saying: "What a silly tart..."and in the end, Kendrick's outburst of humanity is seen merely as a comical interlude. All of this is proof that Reitman is far from an auteur and more of a jobber, that is an interchangeable cogwheel in a sausage-making Hollywoodian machine.

In the end, what the film's failure boils down to is a basic, but devastating structural flaw. After all, the first imperative of screenwriting is to present a round, sympathetic character as protagonist. Here, it should've been Anna Kendrick's. Had it been, with Clooney's and Farmiga's as satellite characters, sort of a cautionary couple representing the lowest refuge of a dead humanity, Up in the Air could've been a great film. But I guess the producers didn't want to jeopardize Clooney's marquee value by gambling on lovely, but inexperienced Kendrick. By acting in such a conservative, gutless way, they left the film with a critical weakness, which they basically "bought" off by emphasizing Clooney's commanding performance and by getting award nominations which the film is completely undeserving of. A nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay? What? It should get a Razzie, for fuck's sake!

0,5/5 The epitome of bourgeois cinema: a film that pushes real people beyond the margins of two rich non-characters' lives of luxury. Half a star for Anna Kendrick.

Hatchet (2006)

REVIEW #0050!

Relying on a voluntarily poor scenario, this film is a case example of the widespread confusion between parody and pastiche. Whereas parody is actually a very subtle intellectual reappraisal of outdated material, pastiche usually entails the brainless reproduction (and reappropriation) of outdated material. Having a cow performing a Matrix-like slow-motion kick falls in the latter category. And so does an impersonal and unoriginal film such as Hatchet. Popular belief would have you believe that its laughable ineptitute, its slavish reproduction of the 1980s slasher mold makes it parodic de facto, but this is just one of the many unpleasant manifestations of postmodernist blowback. Seeing how self-referentiality alone is systematically tagged as genius, recent years have brought us the whole array of cheap carbon copies in "brilliant homage" clothings such as this. Hatchet is an ill-advised attempt to rejuvenate a dead genre by copying every single element that caused its death.

If by "old-school", you mean Friday the 13th-like, then I'm off this boat...

A group of insipid, generic tourists (drunken college kids, the old couple, the dumb bimbos and the token black dude...) get stranded in a deep Louisiana swamp despite ample warnings by the usual plethora of excentric natives. There, they are bumped off one by one by (wait for it...) a mutant kid the legend had accidentally killed by thugs on a Halloween night long ago. There is nothing much else to add to the skeletal synopsis which tries way too hard to amalgamate every horror cliché in the book. It's actually pretty sad to see such a mad drive toward mediocrity, but from where I stand it seems that the symphony of cash registers was just too enticing and the effort too small for director Adam Green and vets Tony Todd, Robert Englund, and Kane Hodder (the three of which have bit parts) not to try and pull on the nostalgia cord of undiscriminating Friday fans.

As is the case with most movies of this ilk, any hint of suspense has been sacrificed to profit dishonestly orchestrated surprises (i.e. the monster suddenly emerges from out of frame and the volume of the soundtrack is boosted to cause shock through loudness), while atmosphere- making is relegated to smoke machines and carton trees. Basically, every lame set-up in this film is a mere pretext to show brutal (but surprisingly elaborate) gore. It follows that the entire runtime consists of a never-ending succession of chase and execution scenes. The protagonists' psychological superficiality and lack of resources is thus even more regrettable since only characterization could have elevated this above swine. On one hand, there is no real terror but the one you can find in dismemberment and disembowling. On the other, no discourse about violence, and no catharsis. Every protagonist exists solely as cannon fodder. I mean, hatchet fodder...

In conclusion, there is little to say about Hatchet that hasn't already been said about Friday the 13th and its sequels. In fact, it is actually a worse film than any of those since it follows them faithfully and docilely, while loudly claiming its own ineptitude. We should further ask ourselves if such a crowd pleaser should use its five assets (Hodder, Englund, Todd, gore and nudity) so parcimoniously, even stingily. I mean, why bother with a scenario (which sucks balls anyway) when the simple succession of attractive elements (such as in a film like Crank) would have sufficed? I mean, if you're going to make a film wherein the only good thing is gore, then why not do 90 minutes of gore? The answer lies in the fact that, and this is a sad staple of our era, the simple showcasing of any element amounts for the casual moviegoer to its just usage. Thus, a little bit of gore equals gore, and a cameo equals a full-fledged role ("Have you seen David Hasselhoff in A Dirty Shame? He was awesome!") Unfortunately, for lazy moviegoers rise lazy directors and lazy films such as Hatchet... which has surprisingly generated a cult following.

This piece of shit actually won the Public's Prize for Best International Film at Fantasia when at least Special, The Signal, Viva, Offscreen, L'ombre du cerisier, The Girl Next Door, Return in Red, Right at Your Door, Kiltro, Trapped Ashes, Home Sick, Postal, The Devil Dared Me To, Miracleman, The Rage, Dance Machine, Murder Party, Assmonster, Wolfhound, Deaden, Perfect Creature, The Backwoods, The Tripper, End of the Line and many others were head and shoulders above its level.

... I've seen about enough token black guys getting
brutally slaughtered. Hell, gimme Ken Foree!

1/5 An abysmal film with awesome gore.