Srđan Spasojević
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Literally putting the “porn” in torture porn is the film’s central conceit, but most of the ideas it communicates are no more outrageous than ones in Hollywood blockbusters such as Joel Schumacher’s “8mm” or Eli Roth’s “Hostel” films — only “A Serbian Film” leaves fewer gory details up to your imagination.
Both Demonlover (2002) and Hostel (2005) posit hyperbolical versions of the business at its sadistic outer extremes, while A Serbian Film (2010) uses pornography as a metaphor for the exploitation of an entire nation – but only Girl House uses an online bordello as the dynamic background for a stalk-and-slash psychodrama (while giving the porn industry itself an easy ride).
Literally putting the “porn” in torture porn is the film’s central conceit, but most of the ideas it communicates are no more outrageous than ones in Hollywood blockbusters such as Joel Schumacher’s “8mm” or Eli Roth’s “Hostel” films — only “A Serbian Film” leaves fewer gory details up to your imagination.
But what goes on in the narrative bears only the most tenuous political relevance, even metaphorically � it could be set anywhere, except that its Eastern European milieu, as with the Hostel films, might seduce American viewers into a xenophobic response along the lines of "Yeah, those Transylvanians or whatever the hell they are, they're totally sick fucks."
And to be fair, what’s shown here isn’t any more repulsive than other art films of an exploitative bent such as “A Clockwork Orange,” “Salò,” “Baise-moi” and, more recently, “Antichrist” — save for the “newborn porn,” which seems to be the real point of contention in “A Serbian Film” that has rarely survived censorship and even led to the Spanish prosecution of Sitges festival director Ángel Sala .
Come on - let's not confuse distaste for criminal condemnation, or else you might have found plenty of directors (including, delarge, the one who inspired your avatar) getting custodial sentences for what they have portrayed fictionally - or does the rape, torture and murder depicted graphically (and comically!) in A Clockwork Orange not inspire similar distaste in the viewer?
It’s not as clever as Michael Haneke’s Funny Games , which undermined genre expectations with its banality and frustrations, but it is admirable for its audacity.
Ranking up there with the most disturbing horror movies to be found across the globe – Martyrs, A Serbian Film and Inside – Antlers pushes the envelope to the edge, proving Cooper a dedicated student of the French New Extremity movement and eliciting in this viewer some of the most visceral reactions I’ve had during a horror movie throughout my long tenure watching exactly these kinds of films.
Other filmmakers range from American Ti West (“House of the Devil”), whose “M is for Miscarriage” is one of the more stomach-churning entries, to controversial filmmaker Srdjan Spasojevic (“A Serbian Film”), who offers the bizarre “R is for Removed,” about a badly burned man whose skin is peeled by doctors to reveal 35mm film.
One easily recognizes Srdjan Spasojevic ( A Serbian Film ) in Removed's equation of the body and the grotesqueries it's capable of with the possibilities and fragility of celluloid, Bruno Forzani and Héléne Cattet ( Amer ) in the appropriately titled Orgasm's copious ejaculation of hyper-symbolic, giallo-influenced imagery, Ben Wheatley in the disposable Unearthed's regurgitation of Kill List 's scorched-earth-looking kitchen-sink-drama-meets-hitman-thriller vibe (the whole thing is framed from the point of view of a vampire about to get staked), and Xavier Gens in the virtuosic, Kronos Quartet-sounding XXL's mix of profoundly graphic body horror and psychologically attuned social commentary (a similar ambition runs throughout Simon Rumley's startlingly humane Pressure, about the lengths a woman is pushed to in order to support her children).
Hell, go for broke and try Pasolini’s Salo or Srđan Spasojević’s A Serbian Film.
Later releases like The Human Centipede trilogy and A Serbian Film staked out reputations as being even more extreme with mutilation, coprophagia, and an honest-to-god death by skullfucking.
It’s not especially terrifying (very few films are, these days… then again, “Evil Dead” is not meant to be another “Exorcist”, or even “The Orphanage”) or shocking (nope, it’s not “A Serbian Film”) but it is quite visceral.