What you get served here is pretentiousness aplenty, pseudo-philosophy wrapped in gory effects. Does it have any impact whatsoever? Nada. Does it have anything profound to share with us? Not in the slightest. This is one of those films that deludes many into believing that underneath the repetitive vomit-gore ( and damn it's repetitive, we get it already, it's not extreme, it's just insanely cheap and boring ) and bloodorama, there is actually something of substance to be found, some nihilistic pearls of wisdom to be lapped up. And so just in case we as audience didn't get the "profundity" merely through visuals and music, we also get the message of meaninglessness hammered through our skulls in the form of repetitive and monotone monologue. The absolutely talentless girl conveying her oh so torturous life to us sounds like she is reading off a shopping-list, she displays no emotion at all, we care about her plight as much as we care about cardboard. Not hard to see what the main inspiration for this travesty is either, it's obviously Martyrs. Several images here are copied with shameless glee, but of course with zero impact, mr. Juuhl is simply not talented enough, don't have the proper vision that Pascal Laugier once had. Whereas Martyrs is one of the most unsettling and powerful films out there, creating almost a genre of it's own, transcending horror, this pile of pompous garbage doesn't even begin to reach the depths that Martyrs did. What was an essential aspect to Annas suffering, her journey into trans-formative non-knowledge, was the screaming silence that ran through it all, we felt her pain, we saw ourselves beneath our words, the speechless darkness. This on the other hand is just surface and cliché-angst, monologue that seems to be written by a self- harming emo kid. There is not true darkness to be found here sad to say. Avoid at all costs.
