So I finally watched A Serbian Film, which oh so many people proclaimed to be the most graphic, sickening, horrifying and disturbing horror film ever produced. But rather than being shocked and jolted to the core, I was bored to death. This movie is slow-moving, ponderous, overwrought and ultimately boring. It is filmed with a needlessly shallow depth of field, creating a really irritating soft-focus effect throughout the movie, as well as a dull color palette so typical of today’s horror films. The plot was practically nonexistent. And the gore - for a movie that had been hyped so much - was severely underwhelming.
The thing about horror movies, even the most jarring and transgressive ones, is that to be effective, there really has to be a certain amount of tension, and you have to care about the characters a little bit. And neither of these factors were present in A Serbian Film. Perhaps something was lost in translation - as you might imagine, the film’s dialog was all spoken in Serbian, with English subtitles. But the characters came off as wooden and one-dimensional, and never once did I ever really care about what happened to any of them. And because I didn’t care, there was no sense of danger or risk, and I sat nonchalantly and distractedly as they were subjected to all kinds of sadistic sexual brutality ostensibly aimed at shocking the viewer.
In short: a gigantic let-down. 8MM with Nicolas Cage achieved ten times the effect of this film with one tenth of the gore and none of the explicit sex. I can only assume that A Serbian Film elicited so much buzz and hype because it is a foreign film and therefore supposedly pushes the boundaries more than a film from provincial, dowdy America could. Well…no.
No, it became known because of the baby rape scene. Doesn’t make any difference where the film was from, you show a scene of a newborn being raped and it’s gonna be talked about.
One review I’ve read pointed out that the protagonist’s financial troubles were supposed to be the source of tension that forced him into the underground porn industry. Yet, you never see any evidence of the supposed financial troubles; there’s like one scene of him looking conflicted as he pays for his son’s piano lessons. So, he decides to go on a drugged-out extreme murder/rape porn rampage because the piano lessons are getting pricey? Doesn’t seem plausible.
Didn’t see the movie you’re talking about, but from your description it sounds like one of those foreign, depressing, hipster oriented films that critics go nuts about. Surprisingly some of those can actually end up being pretty good if you go into it without expecting too much. I ended up really enjoying No Man’s Land despite the slow pace and gloomy mood. Give it a try if you can bare any more Eastern Europeans on your TV.
Agreed, I wasn’t impressed at all (and I also disliked 8mm). I was more impressed by the cinematography than you seemed to be (though it’s still nothing to write home about) and the performances were reasonably effective, but overall it just came off as a shallow attempt to elicit shock and revulsion.
Some of the more favorable reviews seemed to find value in its allegorical nature, the way it tries to relate these awful events to larger currents of dehumanization in contemporary culture. I don’t think that’s a stretch, necessarily, but I also don’t think it’s particularly interesting as social commentary.
Is anyone else utterly unsurprised that Argent Towers apparently sought out and watched A Serbian Film?
Maybe he got bored re-reading and talking about Hogg? :D:D:D
(You knew you’d never live that down, right, Argent? ;))
I thought the performance by the lead actor was actually pretty good, and the last scene in the warehouse was surprisingly emotionally shocking. You know, where he
is tricked into raping his semi-conscious young son, whom he loves dearly. I thought their relationship was developed pretty well so that scene was really disturbing. Much more so than any of the gory violence that came before.
Is it accurate that the lead actor is basically Serbia’s version of George Clooney, i.e. an extremely popular & well-known leading man? (Oddly I cannot seem to find the film listed on IMDB to check.)
That’s weird, I can’t find it via the search feature either. The Wiki article managed to have a direct link to the entry.
And yeah, what you said earlier for why it’s “hyped.”
Off the top of my head, I suspect this may have to do with IMDB’s settings re: “adult” films. If they’re classified as such by IMDB, I think there’s a setting in place to make their entries unfindable through search (kinda like Google’s Safesearch). This is probably the default setting for viewers who aren’t logged into IMDB.