The odds are not high that I would enjoy this
The odds would be 100% you will not enjoy a second of it.
Even during its non-violent moments, it is meant to be an endurance test of muddy audio, blurry video, formless narrative...not unlike watching snippets of really lousy home movies. For example ,there is a long scene of the two killers wandering around a miniature village, just pointing at all the tiny buildings and making stupid comments, telling bad jokes and saying things which have no relation to anything the viewer could possibly care about.
It is designed to make people turn it off. It's equal parts boredom and vileness.
if the film(s) actively offend me in any way, I feel like that is exactly what the film maker wants, and I don't want to give some edgelord the satisfaction of having traumatized a "normie".
I'm the same. I like films that push buttons, but I feel that there needs to be more going on for me to bother if that is all the film is going to do.It doesn't take any great skill to be offensive.
But...to legitimately shake a viewer? I don't think that comes so easy. Being offensive is one thing, but articulating pure human despair takes at least some skill. Even when that skill is apparently completely invisible, as it very much is here.
And this is where I struggle a bit with how I feel about the film. I despise it, for sure. And I don't think it's good. And I definitely don't think most people should even bother watching it. Maybe no one should watch it. Nothing I'm about to say makes me any less comfortable with my one star rating. It was lucky to get that much.
But I'd be lying if I said there isn't some kind of mysterious alchemy going on here. How quickly the film is able to burrow and fester under the skin. And, the more I think about it, what's surprising is how it's not really even the extreme violence and abuse and humiliation that does it. As it turns out, much like Texas Chainsaw, nearly all of the carnage is committed off camera. And in regards to the suffering of the victims, much like Salo, there is very little resistance or even emotional reaction shown coming from the victims. So there is somewhat of a muted effect that the violence has on the audience. It's omnipresent. It's unavoidable. We are constantly aware of the bloody end results of it. But, that's not really what lingers in the subconscious.
I think where the real horror of the film resides in the personalities of the two main characters. Or their absence of personality. They are nobodies. Absolute zeros. They aren't intimidating or creepy or strong or anything even worth remembering. They are a couple of charmless douchebags, who no one likes and whose pathetic insecurities are completely visible to anyone watching, but who in their little basement, can act like untouchable kings. Who use violence to trick themselves into thinking they matter. And it's that banality, that smallness of character, that pettiness of motiviation, that makes all the damage they create so upsetting and aggravating.
Like in many real life cases, this is exactly the kind of thing which fuels this kind of violence. It's about their total impudence, not just sexually, but socially. They don't matter, they know they don't matter, and because of this others have to die just so they can trick themselves into believing their victims matter even less than they do.
The fact that such small men can create such real world damage is what is so horrifying.
So while there is some part of me that's curious..
Just don't. I've provided whatever you might get out of the movie, without the bother of having to inflict it on yourself. Like Forced Entry, it's not worth it.
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