Art house sickness, with far too much content.
I picked up a copy of this film back in 2010 but was highly disappointed when I found there were no subtitles, so for a long time I had no idea what was going on. Sufficed to say, I finally found the subtitles so I can properly give this title a review.
Many people may regard this as a horror film, due to the horrific content, but to me this is about as far from horror as you can get. There's no build up of tension, no jarring moments (other than the extreme gore, excrement and decay) and no backstory. This is as art house as art house gets, and if you've seen any of Marian Dora's other films, you know what you're getting. At first glance, this film is rather tedious and underwhelming. But after really watching it, I found the cinematography to be rather awesome. To me this film portrays decay and death rather well. You can almost smell the rotting flesh, human excrement and other foul stenches you would find in an open air mass grave. Marian Dora certainly knows how to portray putrefaction and disgust. This sort of film will have it's supporters and it's definite critics, as it should, but perhaps that's just because it's so hard to define. The acting was mediocre, the script a bit overplayed but well made and the camera work quite well for the obvious small budget. So I'll give it high marks on these merits. There's one thing that I absolutely hate...
The animal cruelty. No movie producer should ever feel the need to kill a cat on camera for shock value. That's just stupid, wrong, and should be punishable by prison time. I give this film a big fat ZERO for the use of several animals for death scenes. I can look past the pig slaughter, because you eat a pig after you kill it. But just wasting an animal for no reason? That's terrible. Torturing a human on camera, or smearing excrement on them, or whatever is fine because people have the cognition to understand what's happening, a cat does not.
For the latter part of this review, I will never be supporting Marian Dora's work from this point forward. This is sad because I really like his work as an artist, but I cannot get behind art that harms animals for no reason. I give this a 5 star only on the merits it deserves, if it had been without the cruelty, I would have rated it far higher and I would be purchasing all of his work.
Many people may regard this as a horror film, due to the horrific content, but to me this is about as far from horror as you can get. There's no build up of tension, no jarring moments (other than the extreme gore, excrement and decay) and no backstory. This is as art house as art house gets, and if you've seen any of Marian Dora's other films, you know what you're getting. At first glance, this film is rather tedious and underwhelming. But after really watching it, I found the cinematography to be rather awesome. To me this film portrays decay and death rather well. You can almost smell the rotting flesh, human excrement and other foul stenches you would find in an open air mass grave. Marian Dora certainly knows how to portray putrefaction and disgust. This sort of film will have it's supporters and it's definite critics, as it should, but perhaps that's just because it's so hard to define. The acting was mediocre, the script a bit overplayed but well made and the camera work quite well for the obvious small budget. So I'll give it high marks on these merits. There's one thing that I absolutely hate...
The animal cruelty. No movie producer should ever feel the need to kill a cat on camera for shock value. That's just stupid, wrong, and should be punishable by prison time. I give this film a big fat ZERO for the use of several animals for death scenes. I can look past the pig slaughter, because you eat a pig after you kill it. But just wasting an animal for no reason? That's terrible. Torturing a human on camera, or smearing excrement on them, or whatever is fine because people have the cognition to understand what's happening, a cat does not.
For the latter part of this review, I will never be supporting Marian Dora's work from this point forward. This is sad because I really like his work as an artist, but I cannot get behind art that harms animals for no reason. I give this a 5 star only on the merits it deserves, if it had been without the cruelty, I would have rated it far higher and I would be purchasing all of his work.
- nasteen8
- Mar 30, 2014