Larva Mental

The story follows a father and daughter who seem to share a traumatic experience. One day, the father puts on a collared shirt and leaves on what appears to be a business trip, leaving the daughter at home to snoop around on his computer. When she discovers an intensely depraved video of him and some suspicious hidden masks, she becomes so distraught that she brutally commits suicide. Upon discovering the body, he is so distressed that he descends into a depraved madness.

"Larva Mental" is a horror film that offers an intense and disturbing experience. The plot explores dark and twisted themes, and Mikel Balerdi's direction creates an unsettling atmosphere. The film is visually striking and uses disturbing imagery to convey the anguish and depravity of the characters. The performances by Mikel Balerdi and Dairi Gaona are notable as they successfully convey the emotional complexity of their characters.

Living alone in their apartment, a man and his girlfriend are overwhelmed by their impulses and desire to explore the tabooer side of life eventually leading them down a road of darkness and self-perversion that neither of them was ever expecting after she succumbs to a tragic accident.

There's quite a lot to like with this effort. The film is at its best when working with the far more psychological undercurrents that are being utilized by the experimental imagery present. The almost dialog-free effort tends to bring about scenes with plenty of context about their intentions, from the attempts by the woman to calm herself with cat photographs that gradually turn into more ferocious and vicious snapshots indicating the flashes of blood-covered figures working throughout her conscious mind. The fact that this precedes both of their constant need to press forward with exploring more taboo aspects of their own self-mutilation in the name of confronting the taboo nature of the human condition, revolving around blood-play, carving symbols or other figures into their bodies, or generally disfiguring themselves as a means of stopping these visions from continuing speaks highly of where the intent behind this one lies. Moreover, it's also rather enjoyable in the fact that it doesn't just explore these themes but is openly at ease with featuring such material in the first place. The frankness with which it displays the bathroom pleasuring, cleaning off dead skin from various orifices of his body, or purposefully placing objects inside him by getting into close-up views of the act being performed offers up shockingly perverse ease and numbness to the imagery on-screen. This also extends to the close-quarter views of the male form in unexpected and graphic means, growing erect while pleasuring himself, actually showing the insertion takes place inside his orifice or the release of actual bodily fluids. This becomes rather more disturbing as time goes on after realizing the whole intention was done while trying to remember and honor the forgotten memory of his lover based on their relationship together, all of which make for a wholly disturbing and bizarre trip. There are some drawbacks to this type of effort, though. Most obviously is the complete lack of dialogue that brings a more coherent understanding to their snapped mental state as the experimental state presented here might be off-putting for some to get through. It does the same for the extreme content on display, as a lot of the scenes here might be far more offensive and shocking than actually disturbing as were the intentions. From the seemingly endless scenes of him fondling himself in the bathroom that takes forever to get to the expected release and her self-mutilation with the scissors that has been shown before in various stages before which devalues some of their impacts. However, the biggest issue is that despite this being nearly an hour, some of it comes off as needless filler running on a bit too long for its own good. Not only does it hit a natural ending point and then keep going rendering the material somewhat irrelevant past that point but has several scenes designed merely to pad the running time as it is, which are enough to hold this down overall.

Rated Unrated/NC-17: Extreme Graphic Violence, continuous Graphic Male and Female Nudity, graphic sexual encounters, and drug use.

This movie is pure trash on all levels! Terrible acting by the two leads, especially from the male whose only talent seems to be fingering his butthole with a crucifix while he defecate and masturbates (yes this actually happens in the movie). The rest of the movie is just a highly boring display of self mutilation. Most of it is just your basic self mutilation like cutting themselves with knives. Not until the penis mutilation does anything really crazy actually happen. By then your already mentally checked out because there's almost zero story going on here. Yea more happens but who cares. Im sure this'll please extreme underground gore nerds. Yes this is dark and some of the gore looks really good but I gotta say this movie is so unbelievably boring! There's nothing to care about here. This movie is only for gorehounds looking for another extreme movie to add to their messed up collection. For the rest of us avoid like the plague.