A Serbian Film (a.k.a. the most fucked up movie ever) [DO NOT READ THIS POST!]

In case the title didn't tip you off, this movie is fucked up. Not like a little fucked up. A lot fucked up. So, and I type this in all seriousness, it's probably best if you don't read this review. I'm not joking. I've been avoiding writing it because this movie bothers me a bit, which is pretty hard to do. If you read the post about Zombie Nation, this is the film that's worse than that one. So stop reading this review right now. Really. I guarantee you'll be more happy spending an hour staring at the wall than reading this post. There's a saying that's pretty popular these days: "That which has been seen cannot be unseen." If you're even mildly bother by shock movies (Hostel, The Hills Have Eyes, etc.) or stuff like that, really, just stop reading right now. Unless you're just going to ignore the warnings and read it anyway. In that case, feel free to skip to the movie.

If you're still reading, either you can't understand English (in which case why are you looking at this blog?) or you think because you've seen The Human Centipede or the sequel you've seen it all. Cuz that's what I thought. Well, I'd seen several others beyond The Human Centipede, which is actually kind of tame in the grand scheme of movies. There are far worse movies. Irréversible, for instance. There are bloodier movies, though most of the ones I've seen are kind of schlocky. But really, again, I can't emphasize this enough, this movie is fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuucked up.

To give you an idea as to how fucked up this movie is, here's the first paragraph from its Wikipedia entry:

It tells the story of a down-on-his-luck porn star who agrees to participate in an "art film", only to discover that he has been drafted into a snuff film with child rape and necrophilic themes.

If that wasn't enough to convince you to a) not ever watch this movie and b) stop reading this review, I'm gonna give you one last chance with a simple 2 word phrase that comes up in this movie to convince you: "newborn porn." No explanation needed. That should be enough to put you off this review something fierce.

Also, it's subtitled. I hope if nothing above has convinced you, maybe the threat of having to read subtitles will do it.

Skip to the review!

Well, if you're here, I haven't been able to convince you not to read this. Hey, it's your funeral pal.

Miloš is a former porn star who now has a wife and six year old son, who in the opening scenes of the film ends up watching one of Miloš' old porn films. Marko is Miloš' brother. He's a dick, a corrupt cop, and has a boner for Miloš' wife. Lejla, a former co-star of Miloš, finds him and talks him into one last porn film which will pay handsomely and basically set up Miloš and his family for life. Vukmir, an art-film maker and independent pornographer will be directing the film and initially tells Miloš he wants him as his star for his porn-superhero ability to get and maintain a raging hard-on with little to no fluffing. Miloš becomes a bit concerned when Vukmir requires that Miloš know nothing of the script or plot, just that he trust Vukmir's instructions. Miloš is also a bit wary of Vukmir's bodyguard and security agents who seem to be around at all times.

After a brief (muthafuckin') montage of Miloš getting himself back into shape and finding his raging-meat-baton center, filming begins. Miloš is taken by Raša, Vukmir's bodyguard who always wears some ridiculously dark sunglasses, to an abandoned orphanage. There, he's given an earpiece through which Vukmir will relay instructions for each scene. Several of the security agents serve as cameramen. Miloš, as he's being led through the orphanage, sees Jeca, a young girl. Jeca's mother is being taken away by guards for being a whore and disgracing her family. Miloš is then led into a darkened room where he receives a beej from a woman dressed as a nurse. As he's receiving his oral loving, a bunch of TV screens flick on and show a video feed of Jeca eating a popsicle. Miloš starts to get weirded out, but is pushed to continue. Soon after, he's taken to a room with Jeca and her whore-mom. The mother is forced to give Miloš more oral while Jeca remains in the room. Becoming angry, Miloš threatens to leave, but is forced to stay and finish the scene. Thus day one is a wrap.

Miloš asks Marko to check into Vukmir and find out what the deal is with this guy. Marko reports back that Vukmir is a psychologist, children's TV producer, and at one point worked with the state's security force. Miloš pays a visit to Vukmir's office, expresses his disapproval for the film so far, and decides that the messed up nature of the movie is not worth the money. Vukmir offers Miloš a drink and tries to explain his artistic style to Miloš. Still unconvinced to stay, he proceeds to show Miloš a short film Vukmir made .

Seriously, last last chance saloon here. If you don't want to be scarred for life, stop reading now...or at least skip the next paragraph, especially if you have kids. To help, I've changed the color to hide the text, so you'll have to highlight it to read it. Trust me, I'm doing you a fuckin' favor.

The short film shows Raša in a wife-beater and underwear enter a room with a very pregnant woman on a table. Raša proceeds to assist the woman in giving birth to a baby girl. After delivering the baby, Raša proceeds to begin to rape the newborn while the mother looks on in approval. This is most definitely the worst scene of any movie I've ever seen. Having kids just makes it that much worse. And because the short film has sound, you hear the newborn's regular baby cries turn into shrieks of pain as Raša begins. Deep down, this scene makes you want to find the guy playing Raša and hurt him just for being in this scene, even if it's not real. Vukmir refers to this as a new genre of film - newborn porn.

Miloš is horrified and gets the fuck out of Dodge as fast as possible. As he's driving away, he starts to have trouble concentrating and, at an intersection, is approached by a very attractive woman who turns out to be a doctor friend of Vukmir. As she stands next to the car, Miloš begins to grope her like a horny 16 year old getting to 2nd base for the first time.

Miloš wakes up days later looking beat up and with no memory of what happened in the meantime. He returns to the orphanage where he finds a bunch of tapes and camera. He takes each tape and plays it back trying to piece together what happened.

Watching the first tape, Miloš discovers that Vukmir spiked his drink with a drug designed to put Miloš into a highly aggressive, incredibly horny, and highly suggestible state. Under the influence of this drug, Miloš is led into a room with Jeca's mother handcuffed to a bed. Miloš begins to rape the woman, and is instructed to first beat her with his fists while doing so, and then to take a machete and chop her head off, resulting in a rigor mortis state and Miloš committing necrophilia. After Miloš is forcibly separated from the now dead woman, the tape ends.

Putting in the next tape, Miloš is presented with himself passed out on a bed. One of the security guard/cameramen proceed to position the camera to film him sodomizing Miloš while he's passed out.

In the next tape, Miloš sees Lejla question Vukmir's motives and artistic vision. She then attempts to get Vukmir to let Miloš opt out of the film. The next video (or the later part of the same video) shows someone walking into a barren room with a woman chained up. If it wasn't already obvious by the bits on the floor, the cameraman zooms in to show that all the woman's teeth have been removed, presumably without any anesthesia. The woman turns out to be Lejla. The man filming, who is wearing a cloth hood, proceeds to stick his dick down Lejla's throat, while at the same time pinching her nose, ultimately suffocating her.

Miloš eventually finds himself at Jeca's home, still under the effects of the drugs, but they seem to be wearing off a bit. An older woman who appears to be Jeca's grandmother praises Miloš for killing Jeca's mother for dishonoring the family by not only becoming a whore, but by becoming a whore whose husband was a great military hero, making it extra disgraceful. She proceeds to tell Miloš that his final act must be to deflower Jeca, explaining that her father had done the same to her when she was Jeca's age. Despite the fact that Jeca seems OK with this idea, Miloš begins to regain his faculties and escapes.

With the last bits of the drug still in his system, Miloš ends up in an alleyway where, after seeing a scantily dressed young girl walk by, he begins to masturbate because of the drugs effects. A group of men who had also been harassing the young girl take notice and begin to beat the shit out of Miloš. Raša arrives, kills the men, and takes Miloš away to the warehouse where he woke up.

Spoiler Time [click here to skip] (a special note here - as you can already tell, this movie is fucked. The ending is just as fucked. So again, if you have kids, you may want to skip to the wrap up after the next few paragraphs):


Back at the warehouse, Miloš is once again drugged by the doctor, but ends up injecting her with one of her own syringes, which incapacitates her. He is then taken to a large room with a bed in the middle where he is compelled to have anal sex with the smaller of two figures on the bed. Both are covered with the bedsheet.

As he's going to town on his latest victim, the hooded man who suffocated Lejla comes in and begins to have sex with the larger of the two figures next to Miloš. Vukmir, in some kind of filmmaker ecstasy, walks over and pulls the hood off the masked man to reveal Marko, Miloš' brother. Miloš is shocked. Vukmir then throws back the sheet, and Miloš shock turns to horror. The larger of the two figures which Marko is raping is Miloš' wife; the smaller of the two which Miloš is raping is his own drugged son, who is now bleeding. Vukmir is elated in this culmination of his film.

At this point, the doctor from before enters covered in blood and carrying what appears to be a pipe or bed leg. Under the influence of the drugs Miloš injected her with, she used the object as a dildo and did extensive damage to herself. She collapses on the floor and dies. Miloš, finally realizing what has happened, flies into a rage. He attackes Vukmir, smashing his head against the floor. Miloš' wife attacks Marko, crushing his skull with a nearby sculpture. Miloš fights with one of the guards, gets hold of his gun, and kills everyone but Raša. When his sunglasses are knocked off, it's revealed that Raša only has one eye. Miloš proceeds to shove his erection into Raša's empty eye socket, killing him. As Vukmir lay dying, he praises Miloš' work, proclaiming "That's cinema!" Miloš knocks his wife out and takes her and his son back to their home.

Realizing what's happened, Miloš contemplates suicide. But it's obvious his family is destroyed, his son seemingly comatose as they sit around the table deciding what to do. Miloš' wife finally convinces him that they should all commit suicide. So after cleaning up, Miloš and his wife lie in bed with their son between them. Miloš then shoots himself in the chest such that the bullet goes through him, his son, and his wife, killing all three of them.

Sometime later, a man who had earlier been seen leaving Vukmir's home arrives at Miloš' home with a pair of security guards and a camera crew. He instructs one of the men to begin raping the dead bodies, telling him to "start with the little one."

This paragraph is here just to separate the preceeding paragraphs from the follow up stuff. I don't want somebody who had the good sense to skip the spoiler section to accidentally read anything that was typed in that section. Here's a couple extra lines for you too.


Safe place.
OK, so why the fuck did this movie get made? Apparently, the movie is intended to be a parody statement regarding the state of Serbian cinema. The director/writers believed that current cinema is a very politically correct, foreign funded enterprise. They basically feel that current Serbian filmmakers don't care about quality, only about following a rule book of PC'ness that they intended to shatter. Vukmir is intended to represent foreign interest, who are looking to buy feelings in place of being able to have their own. Miloš is intended to be the everyman who is forced to go to extremes to provide for his family, and ultimately taken against his will when he fights against those extremes. They complain that foreign films have to revolve around some true-story victim to get made, thus using the victim's status as a victim to accomplish the task of making a movie. With A Serbian Film, everyone is a victim. Miloš is a victim of his desire to provide for his family, Marko is a victim of his envy of his brother, Vukmir is a victim of his desire to fill his hollow existence with something. Ultimately, everyone is a victim. Especially the viewer.

It's hard to accept that there's any fuckin' justification for this movie to have been made. I guess I can respect a director's decision to make a movie, but goddamn, this movie. There's no way to describe it, really. Even the warnings at the beginning of this post don't seem to do justice to enforce just how much no one should ever watch this movie. The movie has no redeeming value. It doesn't further a cause, it doesn't even tell a really interesting or exciting story. It doesn't teach some valuable life lesson (other than don't do porn, I guess). It doesn't make you cool for having watched it (lord knows I don't feel any cooler after seeing that shit). In the end, it's art for the sake of art. Which isn't always bad. But in this case, it's bad.

According to the Wikiz, the film was screened at several film festivals, which would seem to be a most uncomfortable place to watch a movie of this type. Apparently, they also had some digital transfer issues due to the nature of the film (shockar!). And the movie has been banned in a few countries. It's also a bit surprising to see that it has a 41% rating on Rotten Tomatoes.

Anyway, I really don't know what more to say about this movie. I guess I ultimately don't know enough about Serbian life and politics to speak to the nature of this movie as a parody. But really, if the movie had some sort of political point to make, I think it will ultimately be lost in the fuckin' harshness of the other parts of the film.

One of the other reviewers noted in the Wikipedia article made a similar statement, so I'm going to reiterate it here. If everything you've read above hasn't dissuaded you from wanting to see this movie, you're confused. You just think you want to see it because someone has told you you shouldn't. It's the same feeling that compelled me to sneak downstairs as a kid and watch Natural Born Killers after my dad told me not to. You really don't want to see this movie. But, if you do ultimately watch it, I hope you've been sufficiently prepared for the mind raping that comes along with it. Remember: that which has been seen cannot be unseen.

No Ron Perlmans this go round. He had enough sense to have nothing to do with this post.

Yeah, no song either. Writing this post has made me remember stuff I don't want to, so I'm not in any kind of mood to find some music to post about.