You're Next: The Next Big Slasher?

Movie recommendations are a tricky business; you're always destined for either cinematic greatness and a safe spot on your favourites list or crushing disappointment and a lingering resentment of the recommender for wasting an evening of your life and a nice five pound bottle of plonk.

The whole thing just compounds itself when Cocaine Friday is on the line.

 It was my driving instructor of all people who directed me to watch You're Next, the 2011 home invasion slasher that finally got a release late in 2013, and having heard good things from other sources as well I was quite hopeful for this one. The home invasion sub-genre has seen a resurgence in resent years, something I'm sure someone much smarter than I could use to glean a mystical insight into society, but as with any rise in popularity the quality of the large majority of export most assuredly goes down. The last good one I saw was the gruesome French nightmare fuel that is Inside over a year ago, and even that had its fair share of flaws.

If you're going to perform a caesarian, you might as well do it correctly.

The problem is that the genre has been cut a little too carefully from the cloth during its conception, making it exceptionally difficult to create a film that feels original and engaging without having to resort to a overly gruesome gimmick (see above) to keep the audience interested. And if there has ever been a better example of the sample that all of the others could be held up against to see if they matched the carpet (once you have an analogy, always run with it no matter what), then You're Next is it. Don't get excited folks, that's not as much of a compliment as it sounds.

You can wipe that smug grin off your face for a start.

Let's start with the plot. The film opens with two people having un-fulfilling sex so, yeah, they're going to die; and they do. You can tell the body count is going to be pretty high when the movie is cool with killing off two inconsequential characters just to set up the title sequence. We cut to a family gathering together at the rich parent's mansion for their 30th anniversary; none of them get on and all of the characters are either boring, stupid, a hapless cliché or an unmitigated bastard. The last of those is the proud domain of this smarmy chucklefuck:

Standing next to a man with a tumour on his shoulded shaped like a chubby, bearded head.

Joe Swanberg is terrible. He was bad enough in V/H/S but he can be proud in the knowledge that his acting ability has reached a new low with this film. Granted, half of the issue is with the script, which calls for his character to be an unnecessarily shitty anal prolapse of dickishness (oo, burn) for absolutely no reason even after the danger of the family's situation has become glaringly apparent and he gets shot in the back by a crossbow, but his facial expression doesn't change for the whole movie. He's just...so bad. His acting is endemic of the quality of the majority of the rest of the cast (save for the lead, whom we'll get to in a moment) who are equally as awful; most of the supporting cast are bland, formless cannon fodder and the mother in particular is flat, uninteresting and goes from absolutely chill to thinking the world is going to explode and back again faster than a schizophrenic chugging cough syrup while on uppers.

"Is that a fly? Oh my god, it's a dragon! I'm going to go to bed now."

Sure, it turns out she was right to be wary, but it's not a sign of good writing if a character in a horror film, the genre that defined the brainless fool walking into the warm arms of brutal decapitation (there's plenty of them in this film too), if one of the characters comes across as too anxious. I guess we can count ourselves lucky that the exposition only lasts an agonising 25 minutes before the action starts, at which point all plot is thrown out of the window and we get treated to an hour of people dying. There's a twist in there somewhere, but it's unoriginal, trite and doesn't actually serve to change the playing field in any way; it's still people trying to kill other people just now two of the killers are family members. Oops. Spoiler?

A completely unrelated image of a character in this film.

The shit goes down when, during dinner one night, the family are attacked by unknown assailants with crossbows and animal masks. Although I've just slated the movie for it's lack of coherent plot, the moment it strips away all of it's badly executed exposition is the moment it starts to get good, opting instead for gore, and lots of it. The visual effects are impressive and are evidently where the entirety of the film's budget was spent, the producer opting to pay the writers instead with gruel and squirrel paws.

Who needs plot and characterisation when blenders are powerful enough to scramble skulls?

You're Next's only positive feature is that it's pretty. The camera is generally framed nicely, the gore is satisfying enough to keep your interest and the main character, Erin, is suitably attractive. Obviously what most of the people who have praised this movie for is Erin; she breaks the genre stereotype of helplessly useless cabbages that bleed and manages to do a pretty neat job at holding off the intruders single handedly, but not in any way that wasn't already done better by The Hills Have Eyes. Although it's nice to see a resourceful character (and a woman at that; a shocking deconstruction of gende- *snore*) in a horror for once, all the makers have managed to do here is turn their movie into even more of a clichéd joke than it already is. Stood next to someone with the basic forethought to maybe lock the doors so evil axe murderers can't get in, the rest of the cast descend from annoying genre trope to slobbering morons. It even rubs off on the killers, who are the least original murderers since the exact same murderers in the trampolining dysentery sufferer that was The Strangers, who come across as less scary and more wildly incompetent, crossbow-happy opportunists once they manage to be held back by some bits of wood with nails in them.

Doesn't make it any less painful-looking, mind.

Shall we wrap this up, then? The acting is abysmal, the storyline and exposition are bare at best (consider that a blessing or a curse as you may), the twist is predictably dull and the villains have neither the originality nor the over-the-top craziness to be interesting at all. Although there's an attempt at comedy under all of the awful dialogue, it just isn't funny at all. The good points boil entirely down to the shiny things they dangle in front of your face: satisfying gore, a pretty, if bland, setting and an attractive, unoriginally-original lead. Essentially, You're Next is the perfect template for an absolutely mediocre slasher. We're done here.

Overall Ben Equivalence Rating

Sitting in On a Hollywood Production Meeting - 

"Hey, how about we do something original and unexpected?"

"Or we could make exactly the same thing as always and pretend it's new and original."

"That works too."

*A cocaine and money orgy ensues*

Don't Look Now, Donald Sutherland Isn't Dressed!

Great, you looked. That's just fandabbydozy...

You know what must suck? Your child dying. Like, seriously, that must be the worst. Unless infanticide happened to be your goal when you stuffed your child into that python-laden crate and drenched it in hydrofluoric acid in which case you're the newest member of a very exclusive club.

They meet on Sundays; Mr. and Mrs. West are bringing finger food.

Our film for today deals with the very tender subject of the loss of a loved one, something that's very difficult to portray well in cinema. It's likely the only thing you've ever really heard about Don't Look Now is the controversial sex scene (yes, that link is NSFW) between Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie and something about people in red macs. If that is the case then I implore you not to Google this movie until you've watched it; spoilers are aplenty in these waters, they are.

"Arr, he dedicated his life to preserving the ending to The Sixth Sense, he did."

So, a quick wee plot summary is probably in order: Julie Christie and a moustache wearing a Donald Sutherland are John and Laura Baxter, they've moved to Venice some years after the tragic drowning of their young daughter at their home in England. The two of them are still coming to terms with the death while trying to get on with their lives when a pair of sisters (one of whom is blind and claims to have "second sight") inform Laura that their dead daughter is attempting to contact them from beyond the grave to warn them that John is in danger. So far so occult/gothic horror: you've got yourself a dead relative, a troubled romantic relationship, a seance, a dash of clairvoyance and all of it taking place in a hauntingly beautiful city filled with crumbling statues and dark corners.

Perfect for doing dark dee-gah, no! She's too creepy.

This all might sound a little too formulaic, but from the opening scene it's very obvious that this is a film in the hands of someone who knows what they're doing, in this case that person is Nicolas Roeg of the oddity that is The Man Who Fell to Earth. We're treated to the harrowing death of the couple's daughter, Christine, immediately introducing the driving force behind the rest of the events of the movie and dropping us right into the emotion. Really lathering us up in it proper good. The pacing is impeccable, with an extended sequence of John fighting his way only too slowly through the mud to his daughter and carrying her lifeless body away from the water's edge. It's really testament to the willpower of Roeg that he didn't choose to ham up Sutherland's acting or add dramatic music, instead letting the scene speak for itself.

"Hi, my name's Scene. I like long walks and swimmi-oh, shit, sorry."

Water continues to act as a recurring motif throughout the film which, incidentally, manages to hit that perfect sweet spot when it comes to artistic metaphors and imagery in cinema. They're neither blatant nor obscure, but just obvious enough and used within the film in such a way that their presence actually impacts on the overall tone, rather than just as a talking point for smug movie obsessives at film-talking parties or whatever it is they socialise at. Maybe some day they'll invite me... But yes, water. It's heavy role in (read: literal cause of) Christine's death means that it acts a representation of John and Laura's grief and the way in which it shapes their lives. Obviously, the use of Venice as a backdrop for the story lends itself quite well to this idea, with the characters literally surrounded by their own grief. At one point in the film, John finds himself separated from Laura by the winding labyrinth of alleys and bridges that make up the city, obviously representative of the way in which the pair's inability to move on has begun to create a divide in their relationship.

Naturally...

It's undeniably the splendidly believable relationship between John and Laura that makes this more than just a very typical slow-burning gothic horror. The two of them bicker, argue and miscommunicate with a sincerity not often found quite as intact in cinema, particularly in 70's horror, while simultaneously interacting with each other with the respect and vibrancy of two people who are genuinely close. This is probably due, in part, to the unscripted nature of some of their scenes together along with, yes, the sex scene. Ok, fine, we'll talk about the fucking sex scene already! At the time it was considered pretty controversial, running for about five minutes and featuring plenty of highly tabboo thrusting, licking and bumping of genitals, but I would probably consider it the best sex scene I've ever seen.

Don't look at me like that, Spock. You enjoyed it too.

Let's stop giving a damn about the "explicitness" of the scene for a minute (mumble, mumble, something about violence being considered more acceptable in films and I'm already bored of flogging these rotten, mutilated equine remains) and look at how the sex is portrayed. There's no Bond-esque moment of steamy fornication or the man leaping on the woman to satiate his base desire; the two of them are chilling on the bed reading a magazine, then sex just sort of happens, the scene interspersed with little clips of the pair getting dressed for dinner afterwards using a then unorthodox fragmented editing style. It's one of the most genuine moments of passion and affection I've witnessed since that bit in Team America, and probably the first time in a film that I've seen people do the old rumpy pumpy like normal folk.

Aaaand, yup, she just knee'd him in the balls.

I've hit a bit of a tangent there so to get back to the rest of the movie and, you know, criticism and stuff. The supporting cast aren't quite as convincing in their performances as the leading pair (the Italian guy playing the police inspector was alright, although we'll let him off with it seeing as he couldn't speak English). The bishop overseeing John's renovations is rather dull and, well, altogether too goddy, which is either perfect or shoddy characterisation depending on how you're feeling when you watch it. As for the blind seance and her sister, the pair work well together as a double team, providing the majority of the movie's welcomingly sparse exposition with a kind of friendly creepiness that makes you feel that there's more to the pair then you're ever properly shown.

She's not actually blind, she's just worn the same contacts for 30 years.

Venice is sublime (I'm coming out with all the wanky sales talk today, ain't I); it's beautiful and serene yet at the same time imposing and ominous, the uneasy balance between atmospheres illustrated nicely through a series of eerie murders that occur during the time of the Baxter's stay in the city. Once again, the images of sodden bodies being fished from the murky water of the canals create a parallel with Christine's drowning, connecting these murders with the Baxters in a way that isn't made apparent until the film's final moments. And that brings us nicely along to my final comment on the film: the overarching creep that pervades the whole thing.

"Seriously? Pervades?"

The movie is slow. The whole story can essentially be boiled down to man and woman meet a seance, everyone is a bit worried for a little while, ten minutes of crazy stuff and cue credits. It beat The Blair Witch Project to the make-us-watch-mundane-shit punch by 26 years (fun fact: the famous final shot of Shaky Cam: The Shakening is actually an homage to the ending of this movie), and that's probably my biggest niggle with the whole thing. But, and this is a big but (I cannot lie), the film is so expertly, if slowly, paced that it doesn't actually matter. You get so swept up in the lives of John and Laura that you don't care that you're spending ten minutes watching John fix a church statue or drawing naked.

"Paint like I'm painting you like one of your French girls..."

The film's genuinely engaging study of a couple's methods of dealing with loss is interspersed regularly enough with tiny drips of mystery, be it in the form of a strange child in a red mac running through the dark or a glimpse of a person where they definitely shouldn't be, that there's always enough to keep you interested but never too much that you aren't distracted from the chilling, uneasy atmosphere, beautiful setting or spotless acting. It takes patience and a little bit of thought at the end, not everything is explained as plainly as it would be nowadays, but it's absolutely worth it for a great film that's as much a touching romance as it is an unsettling mystery and is absolutely mesmerising to watch.

Bonus points for fitting six naked Donald Sutherlands in one shot.

Overall Ben Equivalence Rating

Staring at Donald Sutherland's Moustache - 

Full-bodied, flawlessly well-trimmed and slightly arousing, yet it somehow makes you feel just a little bit uneasy. 

The World's End: Not Quite the End for Pegg and Frost

I always feel bad whenever I decide to review a movie that it turns out I like. Reviewing anything you enjoy feels like a cheat; you end up biased in your criticism and just spend the whole thing fawning over it's unadultered epicness instead of, you know, actually saying something worthwhile.

Attempting to explain everything good about David Bowie descends into guttural screaming and a voiding of all bodily fluids.

I'd already decided to review The World's End before I started watching it, and I whole-heartedly regret my choice; this film is awesome. With Edgar Wright back on the writing and directing helm of the last in the fabulously named "Three Flavours Cornetto Trilogy" after Simon Pegg and Nick Frost's disappointing solo effort Paul, The World's End is a funny, painfully self-aware, hyper-violent and utterly charming sci-fi flick that is exactly the same as Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz in all of the right ways. Plus, it's all entirely a build up to the post-apocalyptic wasteland in the Sisters of Mercy Song, This Corrosion.

Who'd have thought something so epic could come out of the Sisters of Mercy, eh?

Seeing as I've already let the cat out of the bag as to my overall opinion on this movie, I'm going to restrain myself for as long as possible and talk about the few criticisms I do have of possibly the weakest film out of an overall impeccable trilogy.

Then again, how could you possibly be expected to compete with this?

The overarching message of World's End is very simple to grasp. Too simple. As in Joey Essex trying to unlock a door with a teaspoon levels of simple. It's a technophobia parable in a similar vein to a Phillip K. Dick novel without the weird dreamy undertones or, you know, subtlety. Technology is connecting the world but at the same time destroying our small-town values and, in turn, our individuality. Duuuuuuude. The "let's not let technology rule our lives" moral actually gets spoon fed to you so much during the finale that they actually resort to laying out the entire movie's philosophy in the form of a very shiny powerpoint narrated by Bill Nighy.

"If you would like to refer to page 64 of the prescribed reading material..."

That said, simplicity has always been key in the Cornetto Trilogy (or Fuzzy Shaun World as I shall now call it), with a basic plot allowing for a big blank canvas to spray jokes and blood all over. Shaun is a Romero rip-off that glazes over the typical zombie stuff and focuses on the importance of friendship, ice cream and a pint. Hot Fuzz is a buddy cop movie that's all about friendship, ice cream and...hold on a second here. These three movies are all exactly the same!

You cheeky scamp.

The plot isn't the only thing distilled down to it's basic essence either; the ragtag bunch of misfit friends that make up the principal cast are all purposefully clichéd characters; there's Martin Freeman's workaholic, Nick Frost's tee-total bespectacled bore and Eddie Marsan's family man. However, they've saved the best for Pegg in the form of the film's anti-hero, Gary King. After two movies it's nice to see Pegg and Frost swap their respective roles and it's safe to say that they both shine just as well with Frost playing the straight man to the slightly unhinged, gleefully self-destructive King. He's the natural end-point of the character that's classically "living in the past"; terrible haircut, immature personality, Sisters of Mercy t-shirt and an unhealthy obsession with his lost youth.

I would make a joke about that essentially being the lead singer of any goth band, but Fiona would disembowel me.

In a movie about the advent of technology and embracing the future, Gary King is literally the past, and this is where Edgar Wright and his spectacular attention to detail take to the stage, with one scene ever so surreptitiously playing Kylie Minogue's Step Back in Time while everyone wanders around in school uniforms. It's the little things that make World's End so great; there's some great wee hints to the unfolding story slipped into the spot-on dialogue and there's as much hidden in the background of the various pubs and clubs as you're willing to look for. The one that I spotted first was the adverts on the walls of the slightly-too-identical pubs, each featuring the number corresponding to that place on Gary's ancient "Golden Mile" pub crawl map. Then there's the great use of colour (blue = nasty alien robots), obvious in the form of gallons of blue robot blood and subtle in costuming choices and set design. All in all, if you're anything like me you'll find the most fun in playing spot the difference in the background, knowing all the while that everything you find was put there by crazy, obsessive compulsive people with way too much free time.

*snigger* blue balls...

I guess I've kind of strayed from the whole criticism thing but ah well, I can't help it. The characters are well formed and interesting, the music is excellent (particularly the original score, which uses some very familiar bleeps and bloops to great effect), the jokes are fast paced but never forced, the story is hilariously self aware and firmly tongue in cheek and my god, it's just too perfect! As such, and also due to me having been infected with some sort of vile pox in the past few days, I have little else to say about this film apart from please, if you haven't already, watch it. And while you're at it, watch the other two movies in the trilogy as well, because they're all exceptional.

Overall Ben Equivalence Rating

Going on a Reunion Pub Crawl with Your Old School Mates - 

The plot of the film is literally the only possible outcome to this situation: utter annihilation. 

Italy Month: The Visitor...Visits

Poster design at its finest.

The last week has finally arrived, my children. Movember is drawing to a close and soon we shall bid our lovingly cultivated facial hair goodbye, welcoming back instead the days of smooth skin and itchless chins. December shall be a time to celebrate the dawn of a new era for mankind, with peace and a clean shave to all men.

The birth of Gillette ProGlide; our lord and shaver.

On the subject of Christ-like figures in need of a good trim, our final movie of Italy month features one such character. May I introduce you to The Visitor (aka. Stridulum); a film, judging by it's trailer, that can only be described using the very technical film term of a complete and utter mindfuck. Like David Lynch straddling you, rubbing your forehead with a spoonful of peanut butter and whispering the Portuguese lyrics to "A Whole New World" in your ear levels of brain-humpingness.

Why was I not surprised when I Googled "David Lynch holding a chicken" and actually got a result?

Just to clarify, this film is in English and is set in the US with American actors, but it's still an Italian movie because the director is Italian and I say so, so mneh. I think it's best we just get this one over and done with; the glowing 3.8 out of 10 on IMDb is making this too tempting to resist any longer. On with the show!

And lo and behold, I'm already confounded by the five minute mark, if equal parts intrigued. I'll give credit where credit is due, the set design is captivating at the very least, with the film opening on some strange wasteland where two hooded figures approach each other, an unnatural mist rolling over the horizon followed by a gust of what I assume is either snow or blended feathers.

Or inter-dimensional dandruff.

The image is both unsettlingly pretty and clear in its message, immediately setting up the obvious confrontation that will form the basis of the rest of the movie; some kind of good/evil battle between the now revealed old dude and a creepy girl covered in feathery-snow-hair flakes.

Furries ain't so sexy now, are they internet?

And bam, we're now in some weird futurey-looking room with the aforementioned guy what looks like Jesus and a bunch of creepy bald kids, the whole scene giving off a very Star Wars-y Jedi teaching the adorable little padawaan kind of vibe. This is where the entirety of the film's exposition is laid down in the space of three minutes: basically there was some evil alien dude called Zateen or Satin or whatevs (sounds a bit like some other evil person, but I can't quite place it...) who escaped a space ship and fled to Earth where he spread evil and destruction, as you do, and shagged like, all the women, spreading his evil spirit to their spawn in a display of the most convincing argument for improved birth control since Honey Boo-Boo. He then got caught by some other good guy type dude called Piñata (I prefer my names for these characters) with his army of killer birds and now there's this little girl who's carrying Satin's evil spirit and something something epic Jesus reaction shot.

Insert appropriately dramatic 70's music.

Now that we're up to date on the story, we move on to Atlanta, Georgia (sadly very few zombies and painfully inept mothers about) where we meet our creepy little girl, Katy Collins, and her mother Barbara. I'll be honest, with a good third of the film under my belt I don't really feel like this is deserving of a rating on par with Batman and Robin. Despite some truly abysmal sound editing (everything sounds like it was recorded on the other end of a dodgy phone call with a passenger on the Costa Concordia) and scenes that abruptly cut off without warning, the characters are interesting but not hammy and the plot is so far relatively coherent, suitably captivating and drip feeds just enough weird and creepy to keep you watching without alienating the audience.

Something batsuit nipples didn't manage quite as well...

The film bears an uncanny resemblance to Damien: The Omen II, with our evil child being pulled on both sides by the forces of good and evil, the idea being that whichever one wins them over will have control over their power. The comparisons become almost too apparent as you get further into the film, with plenty tense confrontations and sudden, brutal animal attacks (big, scary ravens replaced here by a really adorable hawk) making up the majority of the run time. However, as Stanley Kubrick totally definitely probably said, it's not the recipe you use but the pie you bake that counts, and The Visitor is just different enough to stand it's ground. That said, The Omen's pie is probably still better.

Evil pie contest winner two years running.

The little girl at the centre of it all, Katy, is most definitely the biggest strength of The Visitor by far; Paige Connor (of no other memorable roles ever) manages to be spectacularly unsettling without ever overplaying her part, albeit helped along with her task by some very nice lighting.

You can get the same effect by rinsing your eyes with bleach.

Katy, although most definitely evil ("accidentally" shooting her mother early in the film), manages to play off her innocent child look better than you would usually expect in the strangely specific genre of terrifying hell-child films [see Orphan], making the often drawn out occasions when she does rear her ugly head all the more unsettling. Plus, by giving the air of a stroppy child groomed by the allure of evil Katy feels less one-sided than the rest of the film's cast, who literally don't even stop at wearing black or white to indicate the side they support like a bunch of weird colour blind football fans.

"Bad guys? Us? No, we drink goat's blood for the health benefits. Promise..."

The list of aspects this supposedly bad film should be commended for still goes on as well. The set design, particularly of Barbara's house, reeks wonderfully of 70's while also adding a kind of futuristic, post-modern vibe to the whole thing, making the sets equally as familiar yet alien as the little girl this whole thing is about. Then there's the cinematography which, although feeling at times like an over-enthusiastic art project, has been considered very carefully and presents the film with what I could only describe as a garish European style (think fabulous Italian men in tight tank tops, but the cinematography equivalent), cramming both subtle and obvious metaphors down your throat as often as it possibly can. Hell, look at the last two screenshots I've shown; one gives a little girl with shining eyes a pair of metal angel wings and the other shows a bunch of scary dark men being dominated in the shot by a brilliant white chandelier. Dat be sum bitchin' imagery, bro.

"Diggit." - Jay Z

By the finale the film takes a very sudden, very obvious Close Encounters of the Third Kind turn; that's two films made within two years of this one whose themes or styles have been shamelessly copied. Poor show. The pace also suddenly picks up, blasting through scenes before you can really get a hold of what's going on, making the last minutes of the film feel less frantic, which is what I assume the makers were trying to go for, and more rushed like when you finish your sentence really quickly while closing the door on some Jehovah's Witnesses.

"SorryI'mnotinterestedpleasedon'tcomehereagain." *SLAM*

I don't think you'd be at all surprised to hear that the good guys win at the end. Everything turns out hunky dory and no-one seems at all worried when Barbara's daughter, who has just been admitted for psychiatric evaluation for being an evil little shit, vanishes off the face of the Earth with a beardy old guy.

To have her head shaved and sit in a room with Jesus for the rest of eternity.

So to wrap up, The Visitor is alright. It's by no means deserving of the awful reviews it gets, but also ain't exactly a masterpiece. It makes up for what it steals from Omen II and Close Encounters (and to some extent The Exorcist) with a little bit of crazy and plenty of style, managing to straddle the oft-crossed line between weird and impenetrable quite comfortably. It's pretty shaggy round the edges in the sense of editing and characterisation, but nothing that detracts too far from what is in essence a pretty enjoyable and unique, albeit predictable, sci-fi.

Moustache Rating

The Poirot -
Looks all fancy and European. Although it pretends to be complex it's actually pretty straightforward.

Italy Month: Salò, or 120 Minutes of Squirming

I wholeheartedly and sincerely mean it when I say please don't read on if you are of a nervous disposition.
Seriously, no jokes for once.
Willy.
Ok, maybe one joke.

Week 2 in the moustache month and things are heating up. Genuinely, I'm getting warm under this thin layer of browny-ginger fur that's continuing to expand across my face at an alarmingly glacial rate. Another few years and I'll almost look like a full on amateur hobo.

Start small, think big...

The Italians, on the other hand, somehow manage to actually look good with a small animal's coat taped to their faces. As such we shall continue our commemoration of their stoic defiance in the face of bristly adversity and focus once again on a cinema classic from the home of homicidal plumbers and funny-speaking immigrants.

Meanwhile, the Russians look on in calm, albeit feigned, drunken disinterest.

Our film of choice today is not dissimilar in the basic wartime theme of last week's post, but is most definitely of a different league in terms of tone and, more importantly, target audience. Please, for the love of god, don't get Life is Beautiful mixed up with Pier Paolo Pasolini's controversial 1975 film Salò (or the 120 Days of Sodom). This is a film so notorious that it's voted one of TimeOut's top 5 most controversial films ever and is worryingly often wrongly attributed as the motive behind the director's murder shortly before the film's release. When a movie is so horrific that people believe the director was run over multiple times as a result of it, you know you're in for some serious shit.

His legacy lives on thanks to this helpfully accurate dramatisation.

A short note before we begin: I'll try my best to stay away from describing whatever horrors await us and focus more on the setting, the characters and how Pasolini crafts the tone of the film, seeing as most other reviews focus predominantly on the former. Also, just so you're aware of the gravity of my decision to watch this, I'm genuinely a little apprehensive. This is a film that even my dear brother is unwilling to watch and one that I've also put off experiencing for a long while now; something evident in the amount of time I'm taking to write this intro instead of clicking the play button. With that in mind, rum is both necessary and in abundance for the duration of the screening.

If I don't make it, you'll find me in the freezer with the two captains.

Right, it could just be the already crushing sense of dread I have watching this, but must they make everything worse by playing something akin to smooth jazz during the opening credits while a list of names of first the "Masters" then the "Victims" are displayed in plain black text on the pale screen. This is the single most uncomfortable use of contrapuntal (conflicting sounds, my dear stupid readers) music I've seen since Reservoir Dogs, and ain't nothing even happened yet.

If the next shot is of Samara climbing out of a well, I will haemorrhage.

The film is set in Fascist-occupied Italy where we're introduced to four powerful men: the Duke, the Bishop, the Magistrate and the President. I have a feeling there might be some kind of political critique at play here, but I can't quite put my finger on it... They've just agreed to marry each other's daughters and have now begun rounding up various men and women from around the surrounding area, evidently against their will, for some unknown diabolical purpose. Interestingly, hardly any of the men and women we see, obviously being treated like filth as they're displayed naked to the four men for choosing, show any sign of emotion in response to their plight. One boy even laughs when a soldier makes fun of another one of the men, and a girl smiles sheepishly at the four men as she's undressed for presentation.

Jack Dee was knocked back from auditions, that's how ambivalent they are.

This unsettling lack of emotion from the people we know, and whom are also likely aware, are about to suffer unthinkable atrocities serves to elevate the four men from a position of power to something even greater. In a time of conflict and anarchy they are the masters and these people are their play-things; their unrestricted power makes them gods, able to act out their every desire on people who have no choice but to bear the force of these twisted fantasies, their will crushed to the point that they can't even find the strength to cry.

You can achieve a similar effect by walking into any nearby bank.

Pasolini leaves no doubt in the mind of the audience as to his critique of the fascist regime through both the actions of the four men and some very scathing dialogue. You don't have to be an art critic to get the message when the President takes part in the rape of a victim during dinner before inviting the man doing the raping to have sex with him instead, almost comically presenting his backside to the man. That's blunt-force satire on par with going on Question Time and slapping each of the politicians in the face with a herring for a solid hour. As for the infamous scene later on in the film where the poor victims are forced by their leaders to eat mounds of steaming shit; I think that's a message we can all get behind.

"How's the meal, sir? Great! I'll get right on to cooking up another batch."

Despite heaps (sorry) of very obvious imagery, there's still something else floating (again, sorry) just beneath the surface. It's the mark of a solid (I have no regrets) director when you can show the audience everything they want, and in this case don't want, to see and yet still give the feeling that there's more there. Carefully aligned shots (some of which are purposefully skewed or at an unusual angle), sudden, unprovoked changes of mind in character's actions, unsettling music and jarring editing make for an uncomfortable experience which obviously compounds Pasolini's over-arching message whist also saying something more. There's a lot to find here than first meets the eye if you look close enough, just don't strain yourself too hard.

Poo jokes are always funny.

The structure of the film itself is unique enough to be worthy of note, taking the form of three acts each split into a standard rhythm; first, one of four prostitutes tells a story of her most debaucherous exploits to the whole group each morning, these tales are then used as the inspiration for the many depraved acts performed each day, usually all of a similar theme within that part of the movie. Each act also features a wedding of sorts, evidently meant to be another scathing remark by Pasolini who was famously anticlerical. This is most definitely a film by a person who has a lot to say and knows how to say it using the medium, but the whole thing still doesn't feel quite right...

Oh god, here it comes...

Distilled to its absolute essence, this is a film about the sadistic abuse of power by the Fascist regime (and, as Pasolini said himself, consumerist culture) in Italy under Mussolini's reign; it uses the idea of complete physical, emotional and sexual dominance over another as a metaphor for the control of the state over the people. The message is clear, poignant and hard hitting. But the film doesn't deserve the praise it often receives. Now, I'm always up for a good bit of nastyness in cinema, and I'll be the last person to ever say something can't be shown on film (freedom of speech and all that guff), but I do have a problem with the actions depicted here.

Yes, of course it's meant to evoke disgust and make you feel uncomfortable, and it does it very well.

Also much like visiting a bank.

But it's the previously mentioned lack of emotion from the entire cast which gets to me. Although it could be another allegory for the way in which society strips us of emotion and morality, it feels more to me like a simple lack of characterisation. There's very little character development throughout the the film, the four men experience neither doubt nor resistance from any external party for the entire run time and even the victims' character arcs can essentially be summed up as going from dejectedly disinterested to dead.

"Du-d-d-d-duh-du-d-du..."

With no characterisation and no real emotional interaction between the cast (apart from one illicit affair with a servant, which occurs off screen, and an abrupt suicide), we're left with a group of people essentially carrying out the motions on screen. It feels like watching the visual representation of an angry avant garde philosophy major's essay on Fascist Italy; all of the thought and vivid opinions are presented with style and clarity, but there's no room for feelings, and it is most definitely a deal breaker in this case. Sure, it wasn't pleasant watching someone eat poo off the floor (which was actually chocolate and marmalade), but it would have been absolutely unbearable if we had got to know the victims and become more involved in their plight. Instead we're stuck in a strange middle ground between the masters and the victims, not really gaining perspective on the needs and motivations of either side and coming away from the whole experience neither shocked nor enlightened.

Poor show, Salò, poor show.

Moustache Rating

I apologise for associating you with this, Michael, but you're just so darn adorable.

The Paedo Moustache -
Creepy, unsettling and publicly abhorred for obvious reasons. Well nurtured, but often has large bare patches which ruin the whole thing while simultaneously making everyone feel even more weirded out.