RE: Mike's tweet: A Serbian Film, and while we're on topic, The Human Centipede II

have to agree with mike.  A Serbian Film is pretty messed! :P it has some of the most revolting images ever put to film.  but the thing is, this movie would've never worked, if the main character wasn't so likeable.  i actually really rooted for the guy.  i was very suprised by this movie, how well done it is.  it's such a twisted concept for a movie.  i think horror fans should give this a try...but i really wouldn't recommend to just anyone or the casual horror fan.  there's maybe two scenes in particular (anyone who saw it will know what i mean) that is so wrong..so....i don't know..you'll want to turn the movie off.  personally, i think it's a powerful film.  ya got a villain, who is just a pure bastard, and a protagonist, that you'll really root for. 
 
oh, and i love The Human Centipede II.  again, probably amongst the most twisted, unrelenting horror films out there.  i'm reminded of Man Bites Dog.  i actually didn't care for the first one (i thought it wasn't disgusting enough LOL), but then after watching THCII, it all makes sense!  The Human Centipede I had to be made in order for THCII to work!  love the Man Bites Dog/Eraserhead vibe.
 
discuss

I think there's a strong difference between movies like The Human Centipede I+II and A Serbian Film. The former are so bad they're more comedic than terrifying. The latter though is just disgusting. Definitely not my kind of exploitation cinema.

I saw A Serbian Film as well. I, personally, was not really affected by it. I heard SO MUCH hype on how disgusting it was, and all of this stuff... and I wasn't impressed. Maybe if I went in with a completely open mind, it would have grossed me out, but I was expecting something SO WRONG, but it never happened to the extent it did in my mind. I also thought that the movie looked (visually) very good. I was expecting some awful quality movie for the content in it, but it actually looked like it had a lot of money put into it.
 
As for HCII, I haven't seen it yet. I saw the first one, and it was actually quite funny. I am interested in seeing Pt. II.

thats what i mean, i thought HCI was frickin hilarious...yet HCII..i wasn't laughing...actually..i did laugh a few times, it gets silly and ridiculous :P

I still think Salo takes the cake as the most fucked up movie

Haven't seen Human Caterpillar, co can't comment on it, but as a guy who loves horror films, Serbian Film did very little for me. It's just an endless series of unpleasant images. One of the problems with that kind of film - i.e, a film which tries to shock the audience with the worst things we can imagine - is that you simply can't show that kind of thing. It's necessarily watered down. And therefore, it's ineffective. Some of the most terrifying and effective films ever made are terrifying precisely because it only hints at what it being done, and let's your imagination fill in the gaps in its own way. That, of course, is much more difficult to do than simply thinking of a horrific thing and filming it much as censors will allow. I'm not a big fan of films whose only aim is to shock, because in this day and age, you can't really shock people. The kind of people who are gonna pay money to see an unfamous film like Serbian Film are the kind who have pretty seen some pretty dodgy stuff on the internet already, stuff which could never be shown in any cinema. It seems to me that people are more affected by Serbian Film exactly because they know it's a film. What I mean is, nothing is shown in that film that can rival the images we can see on the news every day, and which we read in detail about in newspapers. 
 
Just my opinion, but I found Serbian Film to be pretty dull, and worthless as a piece of art. Well-made, yes, but empty. 

Meant to write "infamous", not "unfamous".

Human Centipede I and II did nothing for me. Martyrs fucked with me a lot. But A Serbian Film did the most damage. It wasn't scary by any sense of the term. But it freaked me the fuck out by how deranged and sick it was. If i had no morality at all. i probably would have laughed my ass off at the whole movie. but since I do....nothing has phased me since.

Read the plot description and there is no way that you could pay me to watch a film like that
 
I guess, things seen cannot become unseen

I think I would've been like "OMG, these are films I HAVE to see" if they had've come out when I was, like, 14.  And I would likely then have acted all pseudo-intellectual (as 14 year olds tend to) and tried to insist on how artistic they were.

Regarding A Serbian Film: I haven't seen it but read and heard alot about it. At first I wanted to see it, because I was curious. Figuring I would never be able to see this movie any time soon (I don't download movies on the internet and they didn't have it in my local viceostore), I read a very thorough synopsis and I was shocked and disgusted by it. I recently had the chance to watch it and passed on it.
I find it really frightening that people can come up with stuff like this. And if people can come up with it, I think it's safe to say that things like this have happened in reality.
The total lack of morality is what makes this film the most frightening. I love horror movies and I've seen alot of sick, gory frightening and even amoral stuff, but I think I have reached my limits with A Serbian Film. It might be the ultimate horror movie to me 
It might sound silly, but a couple of years ago I would have probably watched this. Now that I have kids myself, it looks like I've changed in a way. The fact that people can actually think about doing these things to kids REALLY, REALLY scares me. 

Stupid quote function isn't working...  Argh!
 
Anyway, Ednolb, RE: "I find it really frightening that people can come up with stuff like this."
 
This, to me, is why I think things like American Psycho (the book) and Jam (TV series, horror fans should check it out) are scary:  it's not so much the content, but just trying to think about just what state of mind the people had to be in to come up with this stuff...  I consider myself a pretty big Chris Morris fan but I've still not managed to get through the mere 6 half-hour episodes of Jam that exist.  I just get the impression that he was so angry in an almost completely directionless way when he came up with it, and that's at least as horrifying as the content itself.

A Serbian Film doesn't make a thing on me... yes, it lacks of morality, and it has some gruesome images, as well as Martyrs, begotten (really hard to explain this one...), or Aftermath... but i guess that's part of my current status... i'm a married man, with no childrens... so... i can watch without any problem A Serbian Film... but i was thinking that being a father makes the movie a lot harder to watch... dunno... maybe is just that some pople can "stomach" that kind of movies, and some don't... 

Eh, the curiosity got to me after reading some of this thread. A friend had mentioned it a year ago, and he warned me that since I have a kid that the movie just wouldn't be for me. I watched it last night and have to agree with some of the sentiment in this thread. The imagery in the movie wasn't quite as shocking as the ideas behind it. I had read the plot synopsis on wikipedia, and frankly that was much more disturbing than the film itself (to me at least).
 
I had a harder time watching a video of a man holding both a black widow and a brown recluse on his hand than I did with A Serbian Film. I think this film goes so far over the line, that I just don't even consider the more gruesome acts to be a reality (despite the fact that I know there are some insanely sick people that have probably committed these heinous acts). Spiders, on the other hand, live in my freakin' house.

I have "A Serbian Film" on my list to pick up.
 
I need to see HCII after seeing the first and loving it to death.
Such a film, that tells you what gruesome thing will happen next, and it just gets worse.
.......love it.

I'm sad to say my curiosity got the best of me and I checked it out. 
 
I'm now regretting it. I feel sick. I was warned, so I can't be very angry, but I don't see the point in making movies like this. I'm ridiculously liberal about so many things, but for some reason this just got to me.
 
I'm not married, nor have children and I'm not sure how that would affect anyone's feelings towards it, it's just twisted shit. I don't know how anyone would be able to film/star in something like that
 
If you're going to watch it, be prepared. I wouldn't recommend this to anyone, not even an enemy.
 
I always thought I had one of the most twisted sense of humors, actually, I *KNOW* I do, but somewhere along the way, that flick just crossed a line for me.

Watched it today.
 
It's just a nasty piece of shit really, no other way to describe it. 
 
And to be brutally honest, I think people that think it is good or thought provoking are just pretentious asshats. There is nothing positive about this film. At all. 

NYCoolRunner


I saw A Serbian Film as well. I, personally, was not really affected by it. I heard SO MUCH hype on how disgusting it was, and all of this stuff... and I wasn't impressed. Maybe if I went in with a completely open mind, it would have grossed me out, but I was expecting something SO WRONG, but it never happened to the extent it did in my mind.

I can't think of much worse/wrong than the crap I saw in that 'movie'. How could they have gone any further?

I'm with ednolb. Don't need to have that stuff in my head, TYVM.
 
When I saw Salo, I knew I'd never watch again. But I went into it with prior knowledge of Pasolini's messed up life in totalitarian Italy, knowing the film is an expression of his rage. Context is crucial, in this case..
 
But now... this new torture pr0n generation... "context" is irrelevant. Everybody's hell-bent on producing the next Salo, for shock's sake. Evil is still evil, IMO. Giving depravity the Green Light doesn't automatically make it "art", or elevate it.
 
A mental case with a camera is still a mental case. Lars Von Trier strikes me as someone who is terribly disturbed, if not an actual sociopath. Same with Todd Solondz. I don't need to see the Serbian Film to surmise the same for its director.. the synopsis on Wikipedia is enough. I can't imagine being entertained or getting any enjoyment from such a display.. it just seems to be a "gateway drug" to voyeurism. Chipping away at our collective morality...

I would never watch films like A Serbian Film: the synopsis alone made me want to vomit (the natural human response to something like this).
 
What disgusts me most though, is not the imagery of these films themselves, but that people wrote it, directed it and acted in it.  Who are these people?!  I never, EVER want to meet people like this.
 
I'm not sure why anyone would want to watch these sorts of films, and I don't think I'd be proud of 'not being phased by it'.  

i watched Human Centipede II and also agree its just over the top, to the point where you don't feel its real. I was litereally LOLin my way through, the guy was very creepy though and I was much more disturbed by the home scenes than the silly human centipede ones. As for a serbian film, i have it sitting here ready to watch... but I'd feel like a child rapist just for watching it, so the time has not come yet.

I'm a bit of a weird one for films like these. I would never in a million years watch them but I have read up on some of them just to see what makes people make/watch them, what sort of impact they've had on viewers and to see how extereme people/society can go with media before it becomes unacceptable to them.

I totally get it, in the sense that someone somewhere has likely done some of this crap before, and I suppose it is the fringes of our existance that make for interesting art.  I know the director has stated that it is a comment on art - specifically cinema - in Serbia, and I know the director is a first time director looking to make a statement.  But I just think there has to be a better way of making the point at hand.  The best artists are not typically the ones that bludgeon you over the head with their point. 
 
But even if there isn't a better way, and though I am not one of those that believed that Judas Priest was responsible for those poor kids' trying to commit suicide, I think we are, as humans, an accumulation of our experiences, and I think it is pretty well-established that we, over time, get numbed to certain things as a result of our experiences.  It would make me sad for our children if because of films like this we become numb to some of the concepts that are included in this film.  And before anyone says no way, just consider that there is going to be a director somewhere that is going to use this film as a standard by which he/she will measure whether his film is sufficiently shocking or not, and even if the current director's rationale is correct, how do we know the next one won't be less about the art and more about the commerce?  
 
I abhor censorship, so this guy is certainly entitled to his artistic voice but I think we are also entitled to hold this kind of art to a higher social standard, and I know personally, I won't be contributing to encouraging this means of expression.

Read the movie...and I thought Funny games was fucked up.

 
Just read a brief synopsis of ASF - why?  
JMcE.

There was a time when Todd Solondz's 'Happiness' was the most controversial film I had ever seen. 
 
I must admit that ASF makes it look like an episode of the chipmunks. 
 
I've been thinking about the film a lot the past few days, and it really has made a lasting impression. I strongly advise people NOT to watch it. Things cannot be unseen, and it is one that will keep popping up in your thoughts from time to time, trust me. It's more scary than a Horror film purely on the basis that some sick, twisted fuck actually came up with the idea and made a film about it. 
 
I don't care if people on these boards think I'm being over dramatic or whatever, but it really is an evil piece of film.

spikelineus


And to be brutally honest, I think people that think it is good or thought provoking are just pretentious asshats. There is nothing positive about this film. At all. 

I agree %100... "pretentious asshats" is being nice, IMO. 

Read the synopsis to ASF. Sorry, no thanks.