AKA a boring film with a boring premise, boring characters and…nope, f**k this, I’m too bored to even write a witty intro. 0.5/5 Screams.
MATURE CONTENT & SPOILERS AHEAD
Oh, Netflix, what would I do without your constant influx of mediocre-at-best horrors? Hello, all, happy end of Summer (it won’t stop bloody raining here). I’ve been MIA due to my laptop kicking the proverbial bucket, twice just to toy with me. We can take a moment of silence later.
Due to the premature departure of my Lenovo, I had the joy of watching this trashy film on the 2×4 screen of my phone. But, honestly, I’m unsure a high definition seventy inch would make this film any better to experience. It’s lazy, uninventive and poorly conceived. The main thing that deeply just pissed me off about this movie is that it’s been done one hundred trillion times, there is no credibility and nothing new. It’s just yet another identical teen slasher. This begs the question…what the bloody hell is the point? What is the point in rehashing every other sub-par teen scream that doesn’t even bother to make the gore worth staying for. What a waste of money.
Speaking of unoriginal content, within the first three minutes of the first scene we’re hit with our first cliche. Really I should have spent the duration of this film just counting the cliches. ‘It’s not funny’, I feel like I should have tried to play teen scream bingo dialogue, why do these teens always come across so hard done by and thus are made to seem superficial in their emotions. I hate it when all films do this, utilise stereotypes about adolescents in order to somehow diminish their status or intellectual worth. And, of course, the bloody nursery rhyme whistling. At least this scene had the advantage of being so early on that I had hopes it could translate into some meta-commentary which – it didn’t. Or if it did it was used as a poorly constructed excuse for why this film suckssssssssss.
other first impressions: !!! The lighting is so dark, the saturation needs to be hella turned up ladies and gents !!! Boredddd !!! No real gore, no interesting foreshadowing and sluggish, dull tension building !!! Is that the girl from S3 of ‘Thirteen Reason Why?’ … nope, never mind. !!! The young girl looks like Naomi Campbell pre-botulism !!! A very easy watch, if it manages to grab your attention for five minutes then congratulations, you have the attention span of a fruit fly with narcolepsy. !!! The villain’s mask is fairly eerie, I’ll give them that
‘Pop goes the weasel’…lucky bastard, shoot me too. Seriously, writers? Three hetero-normative couples? At least killing off the love interest first was an interesting choice and the final girl being alone on the ride compared to the two couples is relateable on a deep level. It says a fair amount about the film that I got past the halfway mark and knew one out of five of the protagonists’ names. Also, why the heck make this film an 18 certificate? There’s hardly any gore or violence, the ennuculation scene was the only real piece of gore. Surely the only thing to strive for with this sort of B horror flick is to make it bloody, make it stupid and light, make it the kind of gross, ‘Wizard of Gore’ shit that preteens watch on Halloween. But this doesn’t even bother to do that! It somehow manages to completely ignore all the audience brackets it should be marketing to.
Main character: “We’re going to Spain!” ha, ha, haha – Nah, baby, you ain’t. At the worst you’;; becomes a very maroon ice cream sundae and at the best you’re going to need some serious therapy. I do like the hair drying scene though.
Lastly, before I go cry into a pillow that this was an hour and a half of my life I’ll never get back, even the continuity in this film is shite. When the MC is on the toilet and the camera cuts from bird’s eye view to something else, then back again. One frame shows that the toilet paper holder has paper on it, the next shows and empty roll. Boooo. Plus she doesn’t even pee whilst on the toilet, got a UTI, hunny?
AKA a very stupid, yet perversely enjoyable celebration of zombies and Britishness. Although it is basically a shitter version of ‘Shaun of the Dead’. 2.5/5 screams.
SPOILERS AND MATURE CONTENT AHEAD:
Here we are, the last horror comedy I’ll be reviewing for, hopefully, a while. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve enjoyed changing the sort of horrors that I instinctively punt for; but I have predominantly been reminded about why I never had much time for this sub-genre. In my experience, they seem to try to hard yet somehow, paradoxically, be underdeveloped and steer more towards yawn-fests than straight up, shaken not stirred, horrors or comedies.
But that’s by the by. This Matthias Hoene, boisterous zombie flick basically does what it says on the tin and never seems to extend any higher than the material used in the trailer. The laughs certainly don’t seem to surpass then scene involving Richard Briars’ character – oh, how the mighty have fallen – utilising only a slow moving zimmerframe to evade the bloodthirsty undead. Granted, this scene was comedy gold but lost all the magic and spontaneity necessary for such a sketch to really hit the high notes because it was such a focal hook in the trailer. That, an aged Pussy Galore and a spirited Michelle Ryan are the main titbits that grab you from the trailer. That may be one of the best sentences that has ever left my noggin’. Also, Pussy Galore in a zombie movie? Is this something I, unknowingly, desperately needed in my life?
A few tangents later, we’ll get into some tangible points that I actually made notes on. Eventually. I was, ignoring my better instincts, quite excited about this film (I know I say that a lot, for a cynic). Despite the fact that it has been staring at me from the abyss that is Netflix for several years. But I was excited for a gritty, exuberant and unflinchingly British, zombie horror that doesn’t take itself too seriously. Granted, this is exactly what I got – I suppose some points should be handed to it for living up to expectations. The sad thing is that it could have been so much more if it hadn’t been lazy about it, It could easily have ranked up there with ‘Zombieland’ and ‘Shaun of the Dead’. yet it does fall short, primarily because, well, it’s not that funny.
She is pretty badass, you have to admit.
The premise is simple. A group of Cockney runarounds attempt a pretty amateur bank robbery which happens to coincide with the collapse of the East End as it fills up with animated corpses. Corpses that still seem to maintain gang mentalities and football hooliganry… why not? I did appreciate that some of the zombies were little more than disintegrating skeletons. It’s a big pet peeve of mine that so many zombie blockbusters have these plump, human-looking cadavers despite the natural processes that would disrupt their physicality such as starvation, muscle deterioration, lack of blood supply etc. (Although – these are new zombies so i’m unsure how much dystrophy would actually have taken place. Frankly, if we’re going super scientific – if rigor mortis were setting in…how are they moving? And, now my head explodes). Moving swiftly on before I have an aneurysm, these sorts of zombies are less intimidating than the fleshy, quick boys and gals but there is more of a hint of realism about the decomposition which I appreciate. This decaying subgroup hark back to the sort of 80’s cult walkers like in ‘Return of the Living Dead’.
I did really enjoy the gore in this film, it was effective without being corny, overtly grotesque nor laughable. My only problem with it is that, I think, there should have been more focus on the gore. Seeing as the film itself is self-awarely pretty low budget and low quality therefore I think it could have benefited from being more visceral, more intuitive and grittier. One aspect I think that nailed the plucky and mettlesome tone is the dialogue. The writers did a bang up job making the dialogue humorously hyperbolic yet still maintain an interesting cultural integrity that I liked. Screw the idea of swish Brits with RP accents, sipping tea out of bone china cups with extended pinkies! You want to know what England is really like? This! Intense swearing, twats in backwards caps, drunken shouting in pubs that always seem to have at least one old ‘geezer’ sat at the bar, sounding like an incoherent farmer. Oh and an awful lot of ripping the living shit out of each other (pun very much intended). Really, take a few lines for example: ‘You yuppy twat’, ‘let’s fuck up some fuckers’. Welcome to London, ‘fuckers’.
I found a lot of the nuances funnier than the outright mayhem, like how rapidly and calmly they accept that it’s a friggin’ zombie apocalypse. I think it’s take me a few more minutes to adjust. One other stand out scene that was pretty entertaining is how the jaw of the zombie just locks onto the man’s arm like a decapitated pitbull. Strangely, details like this are biologically fairly realistic but then there are bits and bobs that are so far away from any sense of realism that they may as well be the love children of Tinkerbell and Freddie Kruger. For example, unless you’ve somehow slipped into a Kronenberg creature feature, it would never be possible to decapitate somebody with your bare hands.
Final notes: Moral of the story = Guns are great, kids! also…can we just mentioned the fact that the guy drop kicks a baby. You…ugh, don’t see that everyday?
I’ll just leave this here…
Overall, I guess the easiest summary for me to put forward is that it’s a bit of fun. Don’t take it too seriously, don’t expect it to forever change you with some existential reason for being. It’s exactly what you should expect from it – it’s Cockneys and zombies. Bish bash bosh. Now, don’t you want to book your holidays to come see drizzly ole’ England? You don’t? Huh.
AKA a trashy, horny and dull flat line with all the charm and depth of an egg cup. 1/5 screams
SPOILERS AHEAD AND MATURE CONTENT:
Recently I’ve been on a bit of a horror-comedy binge. For those of you who know me, I know you’ll be shocked by this. I’ve always been very, very, anti-horror-comedies. I think, mainly, for most of the reasons i’ll give in this review. They tend to be generic bloodbaths with the odd dark joke or laugh thrown in. I’ve always hated them, so I decided to conduct an experiment. I watched two in one night and decided to compare them mentally. I was going to do a contrast review between ‘Girls with Balls’ and ‘Cockneys Vs Zombies’ but realised that if I were to concentrate on comparing the two then I might lose the initial spark, the description and intimacy.
As part of this curiosity study, I watched it like I would have done at thirteen. Open-minded, unaware of tropes and cliches and reader reception theory. An English teacher I had for A levels once joked that his marriage ended because English destroys your brain so that you can longer enjoy a book or film without intensely over-analysing it. It’s a tough ole’ life being a writer, what can I say. Anyway, back at the ranch this film is a synthetic, shallow exploration of, well, basically nothing.
Even early on in the narrative you can sense the bland atmosphere. There’s no hook, nothing intriguing or even eye-catching. When a film is so uninteresting that you spend the run time scrolling through Twitter, this is not a compliment to the film. One of my main problems with it is the characterisation. The MC’s are unlikeable, nothingy, hypersexualised and as interesting as cotton wool. How are we meant to care about the deaths, the blood, the chaos when the characters themselves are just dull – cardboard dialogue, attempts to be comedic that just crash and burn as they leave the actors’ mouths. BUT, for Morgan’s sexy dance scene…I can forgive them a little.
Side note: who on earth is the singing narrator? Which of the writers of this travesty decided ‘oh, you know what we really need here – a guy with a guitar who plays no real role in the movie, just pops up now and then to sing country narrations’. Just..what? He does not add anything to the film. He’s not amusing or necessary. The first thing that did actually make me laugh was as blondie tries this odd stripping sequence whilst wearing a falcon helmet. As she begins to show her breasts, the two men begin making out and this subverted expectation actually does work pretty well as a small laughing prompt.
I have an issue with Morgan – I’m sorry but her stabbing the team leader twice with a machete just comes straight out of nowhere. Okay, she’s a bit of a bitch but there’s a pretty large difference between being a dick and being a murderer. Jesus, imagine if they were the same. My dating history would just be a list of straight up psychopaths. But, I digress, two of the most visually interesting sequences are two that, I will admit, did make me think. Firstly, the f***ing chihuahua scene. Warn me, people! I cannot cope with dogs dying…it wasn’t funny, just sad and gross. Why, just why? Also the headless body – what is with that guy? I mean it’s not exactly Mike the chicken here (If you have no idea what i’m talking about, please google ‘Mike the chicken’ he lived for two years without his head. What a legend. “Come at me bitches, I’m not becoming nuggets’.) and he stumbles around seemingly with consciousness, for flipping ages. Ugh.
Returning to chickens, briefly, the only scene that made me jump was when an unexpected chicken appears from the bushes. Now, that’s not exactly a compliment for the movie. As I mentioned, the characters are so underdeveloped and so are the villains. They’re not intimidating, disgusting or even interesting. How can you have any emotional connection, fear or disgust when the villains don’t even utter one word of dialogue. We are completely unaware of their motivations, their flaws, their narcissistic pathologies. All we see are men in dress up with a bit of face paint. Bad, bad writing ya’ll. Seriously, this film was 1 hour 17 minutes of my life I’ll never get back.
Second side note: using your only phone call to scald a cheating boyfriend is just utterly ridiculous.
One thing I realised, this film could’ve been fantastic if it was an exploration of Morgan’s devolution into madness and murderous impulses. If it was a character piece, like ‘American Mary’ or ‘Maniac’ it could have been a great watch. But instead we’re given a monotonous, drab and wearisome hunting flick that neither raises your adrenaline nor holds your attention for more than five minutes.
Overall, this film is a tedious, bland, tired rehash of every teen slasher flick, complete with every weatherworn cliche and kinky stereotype to hook in horny preteens. It has no goals, depth or intelligence. (Sadly, I did write far more than this about this particular flick at about 2am last night but somehow didn’t save 3/4 of it so I’ve tried my best to regurgitate the main points).
“The moral of our story, as you can plainly see, defend yourself from rapists by learning to volley”. Okay…but they weren’t rapists?
I am so done with this film. Ugh. Do yourself a favour and don’t watch it. Just…don’t.
AKA me being somewhat befuddled by how much I love this movie.
3.5/5 Screams SPOILERS AHEAD
Hello fellow ghouls. Despite this blog being more for my benefit than anyone else’s, I’ll apologise (again, oops) for neglecting this blog lately. It’s been half because of my novel and half because of the gorgeous heatwave hitting drizzly ole’ Britain at the moment – I’ve been relishing every second of it.
Funnily enough, I have actually watched and made notes on about five or six horrors over the past weeks but just haven’t got around to writing them up. So, today – ignoring the sunshine beckoning me through my window – I thought i’d choose one. I decided to do a re-watch review because sometimes watching these films multiple times, you really do both watch and internalise them all very differently each time and notice bits and pieces that otherwise go over your head.
For today’s post, I chose a film that I discovered about eight months or so ago. I was bored one evening and was scrolling through Amazon prime, I found this movie – watched the trailer, realised it looked fairly low budget and perhaps a bit trashy but it was evidently very – aesthetically and tonally – British and sometimes I love me a good movie with OTT Britishness involved. The first time I watched it, I fell in love with it. I’m unsure why exactly, the make-up isn’t very good, the acting is varied, the storyline is basic and patchy and the ending is pretty annoying. For all intents and purposes this film should not work, yet it so indulgent, so claustrophobic and so stupidly enjoyable. No surprise that it has this oppressive and cramped atmosphere exists in this movie, seeing as it comes from the creator of ‘The Descent’ which is a fantastic movie. Knowing this, you can see the parallels between the two films – both playing on the natural, human survival instincts and fears of being trapped in confined spaces with no escape. It actually reminds me of ‘Train to Busan’ in some ways, although that is one of my all time favourite zombie movies and it starkly better than this film in many ways.
Let me take on the ride through the narrative – i’m very sorry for that pun, I can do better. We follow a train conductor in England on a night train with a handful of passengers, most of whom aren’t particularly likeable or explored much before they’re picked off one by one by a horde of werewolves. That’s it. A thirteen year old could write that synopsis. So why does this film work so well? Because it’s very self-aware, it knows that it’s corny and a guilty pleasure and runs with it. If it was trying to be something it very clearly isn’t then it almost definitely would not work as well as it does.
For some reason, don’t judge me, I have a crush on most of the characters (besides the old couple, obviously) and I have no idea why. One is actually, oddly, the spitting image of my favourite university lecturer. Maybe that’s why I fancy him – no shame. Anyway, I digress. In the beginning there seems to be a strange reliance of casual workplace sexism and harassment just to move the plot forwards and i’m unsure how I feel about that. Also early on, there’s a comical foreshadowing with the dog under the seat and, admittedly, even after having seen it before, it still made me jump. I’m losing my touch. The tone and dialogue is very heavy on the realism and I appreciate this, it makes it both more relatable – who doesn’t know the frustration of being stuck on a late night train? – and easier to get lost in. The full moon at the beginning makes me smirk, got to love a nicely implanted cliche, am I right? I also think it’s pretty clever to make the driver seem kind and likeable in only one line of dialogue before killing him off to grab the best effect.
BUT, and here comes the fun bit – ripping a film I love to shreds, there are a fair few plot holes in this film. First of all, surely the conductors have radio connections back to traffic controllers and security? Would they not somehow figure out how to call for help? The make-up really is s**t, the werewolf on the poster is better than the actual design. Granted the gore is pretty decent but you just can’t look at the werewolves without a little giggle. Even their claws are stupid looking. Thirdly, what on earth was that toilet cubicle made from? Cardboard? The dialogue was also much cheesier on the second watch than I remembered it being first time round. Moreover, I watched this again with my Dad, and it says little for the writing that he guessed everything before it happened – I suppose it’s objectively more predictable than I thought. A couple of last things: Matt’s death is fundamentally stupid, Jenny’s movements when she transitions are hilarious, the female conductor barely even jogs away from the forest at the end despite Joe having just offed himself for her survival. And, I saved the biggest for last, how on any level of horror existence, folklore or mythical tales are these werewolves STILL werewolves when the full moon disappears and morning comes around. Is this some new strain of werewolfism (is that a word? It should be)?
A few last notes on this strangely entertaining and replayable film: some of the triggers to move the plot along are very obvious. Take the first death of the central characters for example, the girl with no name – side note: good decision to not give her a name, it certainly added some pathos where otherwise you wouldn’t really care that she’s dead cause she was annoying af – it’s fairly blatant that she’ll die first, as she is shown bonding with blondie shortly beforehand and, sure this could just be some final attempts at connection before they all bite the bullet (told you my puns would get better) but it’s short and when she gets dragged from the vestibule you kind of think to yourself ‘oh, that’s why’. Another side note: Wow do they love overkill in this movie. Like, Jesus – calm down you little psychopaths, it’s dead as a dodo. Most of the deaths are okay, until the ending where they all seem to be rushed and meh – except from when cheating-McDickface boots blondie from the carriage to buy himself time, I will never forgive him for that (even if I do find him very attractive, don’t even ask). She had a little daughter you absolute scumbag. Also, poor Zach or whatever his name was – he was a good cookie. Finally, Joe really doesn’t get enough credit in this film. He literally sacrifices himself for somebody he barely has more than a crush on, it also helps that Ed Speleer’s acting is pretty darn good.
Funnily enough, this film gained a 62% on Rotten Tomatoes yet really did not go down well with fans. Personally, I recommend this film if you’re bored, want a fun ride without having to concentrate or worry too much about caring for the characters. Indulge in the utter Britishness of it and don’t try to make it anything that it isn’t, is my advice. I wonder whether it would have the same appeal to other nations because the aesthetics and humour might not translate across cultures. Have you seen this flick anywhere outside of the UK? How did you respond to it?
AKA where I do a list, a rant, a poem – basically anything goes on Freaky Fridays. And when I get more of you lovely people following my blog you can give suggestions for what YOU’D like on Freaky Fridays.
SPOILERS AHEAD!! AND VERY MATURE CONTENT.
Soooooo, first one. I’ve been thinking about this over the weekend, I decided I wanted to do a list for the first post. Then I spent a while mulling it over, the best villains? No, too ordinary. The best zombie movies? Gosh, not yet, that will take a lot of thinking – like, months. You know I love me some zombie flicks. So, I have decided on *drum roll* the most disturbing horror films of all time. In my opinion of course. I’m not going on gore or blood, i’m going on films that you will never forget, that are forged into your memory and branded onto your nightmares. Here we go.
#10Goodnight Mommy (2014) This is an Austrian horror movie that follows the lives of a mother and her twin boys after she’s undergone cosmetic facial surgery. The premise, leaving the mother’s face always wrapped in gauze and bandages, has a sort of ‘Eyes without a face’ ring to it. But the atmosphere is just unsettling throughout, paranoia seeps in and you become just as perplexed and fearful as the boys and – eventually – the mother. The utter cruelty that comes from a nine year old is a cause for unease as it is, he glues – yes, glues – his mother to the living room floor. He glues her mouth shut. He burns her face. He cuts her lips with scissors. He is just a little psychopath, basically. It turns out his twin was a hallucination all along. The ending is disturbing also, the three of them all embracing with these fixed, strange smiles in a freakin’ cornfield. I just cannot with this film. Something about children being evil is petrifying enough but one that has hallucinations, access to sharp objects and cockroaches (that was a tough and bizarre scene).
#9 Scrapbook (2000) Jeesh I had honestly forgotten about this film until about ten minutes ago. Possibly my preteen brain blocked it out. I remember watching it illegally in about four sessions on the bus to and from school, hiding it towards me so nobody saw the horrific, sadistic sexual violence. This film has a fairly simple presence; girl gets kidnapped, gets repeatedly raped and beaten for several days. But it’s just the production of it is so gritty, so realistic – you could seriously believe that the ordeals were truly happening to this poor girl. It goes beyond just being hit once, it’s constant beating and various ways of raping and he even urinates on her. The only saving grace for this daring film, literally the only saving grace, is that in the end she manages to kill him and put it in his awful scrapbook of murder and blah. But otherwise this film is honestly a test to watch, if you can make it to the end – congratulations! You have no soul. 🙂
#8 The Sacrament (2013) I’ve actually, recently, reviewed this film as I’m making my way through Eli Roth’s repertoire, and it’s a fantastic film – it’s done brilliantly, acted amazingly but damn is it disturbing. Watching a mother slit her own daughter’s throat, hundreds of people drinking the poison and the “painless” death becomes agony and the gasp for breath and beg you to help them. It’s a tense, somewhat slow burn. But it’s just somehow just effective. It barely has any gore or guts but it still manages to be disturbing so, bravo, you sick people.
#7Mother! (2017) No, just – no freaking way with this bloody film. Nope. A baby gets freakin’ torn apart and eaten like a freaking fried chicken. I just can’t with this piece of evilness. Honestly even thinking about this film hurts my heart a little bit. Don’t get be wrong the premise is bizarrely and horribly intriguing and original and the acting is fantastic. But just f**k off Darren Aronofsky!
#6: 120 Days of Sodom or Salo (1957) Why am I doing this list? I’m just mentally revisiting all of this devastation in one hit and it’s a strange mix of fear and just ‘nahhhhhhh’. Anyway, this film. Again it’s just a real test to watch, I barely managed to get through it and I’m good with shiz like this but holy hot guacamole. It’s so realistically done, filmed so naturally. And it’s just so brutal. We’re talking rape, all kinds of rape, forced marriage, murder, made to eat faeces, having to have orgies, being whipped and beaten. This film is scarring, cheers Italy.
#5: Requiem For a Dream(2000) The second Darren Aronofsky appearance on this list. Okay, hands held up, the eagle-eyed amongst you will note that this isn’t a horror movie. Correct. If i’m admitting to the struggle of the mid-numbers for this category, I had to steer slightly off of course for this number slot. It dawned on me that I had a fairly clear image of the first five films and the top two but the middle numbers stumped me for a week or so. Apologies, but I had to put this one in here. For those of you who haven’t witnessed this sharp, muddy and honest portrayal of the rock bottoms of various drug addictions, crazed utopias that devolve into this sickening, beautifully eerie spiral. Four people, four interwoven story lines all set into motion by the haunting piano piece of the title. I was about fourteen when I first saw this film and, a while before discovering my particular penchant for violent horrors, I remember finishing it with this atmosphere of unease and discomfort thick around me. I’ve been planning in rewatching it lately as an adult, to see if I find it just as viscerally unsettling as I did then. Personally I think this movie is a piece of art, it is just phenomenally produced, shot and acted and it doesn’t shy away from the gritty subject matter nor does it romanticise addiction, quite the opposite in fact. For those of you nineteen years late to the game you may not understand what I mean by the ending! For those of you who do, there’s nothing more to say. And, despite it being more of a psychological drama than anything else, it does maintain the mood and craftsmanship of any great psychological horror – it’s minute detail, its shocking visuals, its uncomfortable dirty realism all combine into this murky, itchy disturbance. Personally this film effects me more, emotionally and pictorially, than any horror. It doesn’t rely, until the end anyhow, on massively shocking visuals or gore, it’s more about in-articulation, losing your humanity, losing everything to this living inferno dreamscape.
#4:The Human Centipede2 (Full Sequence) (2011) I’m unsure how old I was when I first endured this film. I remember being fairly nonplussed with the first instalment in this body-horror franchise. I thought it was over-hyped and sometimes just a bit dull. In fact the only scene that stuck with me, and still makes my stomach churn a little, was the infected staples image. On the flip side of the coin, the second movie was too much. Strikingly meta, albeit over-relying on monochrome camerawork – be honest with us, Tom Six, was this just so you could save some dosh on fake blood and use chocolate sauce instead? – it follows a repugnant man, Martin, in the same world as us, a world in which the first film exists, who obsessively studies it. Even more meta is the inclusion of Ashlynn Yennie, who played Jenny in the first film, playing herself. The main difference between this fella and the sick b***ard from the first time round is that this one has zero medical training and so his – much larger scale – centipede is haphazardly constructed and even involves a pregnant woman which, to be fair, was a step too far. Pregnant women and infants do not belong in these films (but, then again, wait until #2 on this list) can we just universally agree on that? That put aside, there are certain scenes in this movie that really are sickening for no other reason than to get people talking – sexual and physical molestation of children, masturbating with sandpaper, the severing of the knee ligaments, removal of teeth with a hammer, anal exsanguination, removal of tongues with pliers, laxatives (‘nuf said), barbed-wire-wrapped-rape (a sentence I never thought i’d write), a newborn’s skull being crushed by an accelerator pedal and a live centipede being inserted into Martin’s anus. Blimey, what a list.
#3/Honorary Mention: Cannibal Holocaust (1980) Okay, this 1980 Italian found-footage film didn’t make it onto the actual list because, unpopular opinion, I don’t actually find it disturbing. I’m not sure why, maybe as it’s dated now? Who knows. But I had to at least mention it because it involves the actual slaughter of animals such as turtles, monkeys and fish. I find that more disturbing than any on here! DO NOT MESS WITH THE ANIMALS!!!
#2: A Serbian Film (2010) This is one of those exploitation horrors that if you’ve never actually watched it, it’s likely that you’ve heard about it. It follows an ageing porn star who becomes embroiled in one last hurrah, as it were, but what begins as a last assignment in the adult industry soon becomes a grotesque extended metaphor for life in Serbia – that the country ‘screws its inhabitants from the moment they’re born’. Soon this flick becomes all about the shock factor, it’s filthy and bloody and just perverse. It’s no coincidence that I always see this film at the top of most banned and disturbing horrors lists. I can’t remember exactly how many countries banned this one for, I may be wrong in thinking it’s over 10? Correct me in the comments if you know. Anyway, this film includes necrophilia, incest, newborn-rape (you don’t entirely see it, thank God!) and lots of just…uncomfortable feelings. It’s not even that it necessarily makes that much of an impression on first or second watch, it’s only when you start questioning the whole morality of it that it starts to f**k with you head.
#1: Martyrs (2008)
Here we are, number one. The big uno. This French horror film is many things:
unnerving, grotesque, haunting, scaring, banned and has even been associated
with being responsible for the New Wave French Extremity movement. The plot
follows a young girl escaping from a year’s worth of torture and abuse, then
sees this young girl’s, Lucie’s, hallucinations of a ghost figure. Years later
she arrives to a family’s house as a young adult and shoots them, believing
them responsible for her miserable childhood. Anna is there (her childhood
friend) and Lucie subsequently kills herself. Anna finds a strange cellar under
the basement with a woman, Sarah, who is emaciated and translucent, with metal
bolted to her temples – her eyes in permanent darkness. This proves Lucie was
right about the family and Sarah was the ghost-like, psychological
representation of her guilt. Anna sets Sarah free, after pretty hard to bare
attempts at removing the metal. plates. Then people arrive, gunning down Sarah
(cry – seriously this film is so messed up) and kidnapping Anna (Like, what the
frick did Anna do?). It’s revealed that these people are a sort of academic,
philosophical cult who believe that by inflicting the most extreme systems of
agony and torture on the human body a person could “transcend” to a
utopia-esc post-heaven. They flay Anna alive, again incredibly disturbing to
watch, and she survives, in a euphoric type state. The leader of the
organisation, Mademoiselle, eagerly returns to hear of Anna’s revelations. Anna
whispers in her ear. She proceeds to kill herself. The film ends on Anna’s face
in a catatonic state. It had really mixed critical response, unsurprisingly. I
just remember feeling so violated afterwards. The physical horror of it all is
just too much.
A.K.A I had blotted out how much the tendon scene and eye gunge make me squirm. 3.5/5 screams.
SPOILERS AHEAD
England is rainy and gloomy at the moment, which means I have plenty of time to re-watch some classics. Currently I have a Top 10 Eli Roth Movies list in the works but I realised it had been so many years since i’d seen some of his films that it would be unfair to numerically judge them without a second watch. First up, then, is Hostel, the film that really got Roth out there – placing him firmly on a pedestal entitled ‘Gore kings’.
The opening to this monster of a film is very visually uncomfortable, set along eerie whistling and tools clanging in some very blatant foregrounding. Then, wow, everything is suddenly very cheerful and raucous. It’s a weird transition and i’m not entirely sure it does what it’s supposed to. One of my first connections in this, strangely way stronger than the first watch, was sympathy for Josh. He comes across as very awkward, smart and manipulated by the more broody, boisterous two. Suddenly it’s all about excess, I can’t even count how many boobs we see in this serious of films (I should count them). I can’t say that this is a feminist film because, well, it’s just blatantly anti-women. Women are sex objects and evil temptresses in this film. I mean, Eli, what the frick? Who hurt you? How can you hate women when you’re married to Lorenza Izzo? I mean I’d never stop being happy if I were married to that beauty. Anyway, back to the point, when you go into this film please just abandon any ideologies of female empowerment because otherwise you’ll probably throw something at the television.
The blues in the colour scheme during the brothel scene are calm and soothing, set against vigorous sex noises. Interesting dichotomy, I think I like it. The audience certainly is lead to hate Ollie from the outset, he’s just so vulgar and the connection is zilch. I know that’s the point as he’s meant to be disposable as the first one to go. It has natural exposition which I appreciate. I felt very uncomfortable during the pimp scene, again my natural feminist instincts make me want to cry about how reified women are in this piece. All talking about ‘pussy’ and ‘just taking them’. Who are you Ollie? A Scandinavian version of Trump?
Moving away from my tangents, maybe we can pretend this film is about re-appropriating the male gaze but, let’s be honest, it ain’t. The mobiles are hilarious and date the whole film which is quite cute and nostalgic. But the drugging scene was bloody annoying, I mean they could so easily have avoided that. Then, without much warning, GORE GORE GORE EVERYWHERE GORE. Honestly, classic Roth – I always forget how extreme his gore is, so unflinchingly close up as well. Then, ah the classic Achilles tendon scene. It still makes me flinch even now. I also love how the film is essentially a psychological thriller up until the cutting of the eye, gungy puss pouring out in the hole where her eye should be – just don’t eat your dinner during this film, and maybe lay off the popcorn – just saying. Also poor Josh, can we just take a moment to remember Josh – the poor bumbling idiot who, ironically (God you’re sick, Eli) gets his lips stitched together. “I always wanted to be a surgeon”. *Shivers*. The German has this sickening power and the more he talks the creepier he becomes. It’s even sadder when you realise the people using Elite Hunting have children, babies, families, lives. Yet they’re chopping off limbs and burning eyes out of their sockets like an abscess. Also, be careful when operating a heavy duty saw, they seem to not be idiot proof.
The ending: I learnt recently that there was an alternate ending to Hostel, in which the last standing man doesn’t slit the German’s throat in the toilet; instead he sees the German getting off the train with his little daughter, It’s then hinted very loudly that our man kidnaps the girl. Which ending do you think is more satisfying? The bloody, eye for an eye (pardon the mirroring in that) murder or the quieter, more psychological torture? Which is the the best revenge? Honestly though, the ending is so gloomy – it leaves you on a sour note, so I suppose – WARNING: Do not watch if you’re feeling sad…or nauseated.
Don't Scream 