Baise-Moi (2000)

0.5 STARS

“Rape Me”

General Information:

All information below is taken from the following link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0249380/

18       77 min                          –  Crime  | Drama  | Thriller                 –              3 May 2002(UK)

Director

Coralie;  Virginie Despentes

Writer

Coralie;  Virginie Despentes

Stars

Raffaëla Anderson;  Karen Lancaume;  Céline Beugnot

Plot:

Baise-Moi (2000)

A rape victim and a prostitute ‘rebel against society’ by going on a pointless rampage of violence and sex.

Review:

Baise-Moi really is just a pointless waste of images and any decent human being’s attention. It’s a film which wants to be shocking and outrageous but never actually is. After viewing it, I IMDBd it – only to discover that this movie actually has ‘fans’. I place the word: fans, in-between apostrophes there because I believe these are the sort of people who are tricking themselves into believing that the film actually has some depth, simply by over-intellectualising all of the events that they see – the sort of person that believes that The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is a Marxist critique on Nazi Germany (i.e. the chainsaw-wielding ‘Leatherface’ being Hitler himself, and all of his cannibal family being members of the SS, and no doubt intentionally searching for a shot where the coincidental placings of decaying flesh and/or bones forms the shape of swastika).

And anyone who claims that this film is remotely ‘feminist’ is directly insulting Emily Davison.

The film’s setting is in the seedy underbelly of France. A place where drugs, sex, violence and rape are in every corner. Imagine Hobo With a Shotgun without the winking-at-the-camera self-awareness or the irony. The film unfolds in a very serious way, as if it has something interesting to say, and that all of the comic moments are actually satire – this can only be proven by its rather confrontational title when translated into English (‘Rape Me’). It’s like a Gaspar Noe film, without any of the style, visual flair or depth.

The film pretty much opens with a rape scene. The scene itself is rather effective. It’s shot with a manic hand-held camera – which captures the chaotic and brutal nature of the event itself without being so shaky that you can’t see what’s going on. There’s a horrific moment where one of the characters lies on the floor, defenseless, pretty much waiting to be raped, whilst she hears the sounds of desperation and agony from her friend who is being raped. It’s a powerful moment, and perhaps the best sequence in the film, because it injects an emotional reaction from the viewer during a scene of violence. I’ve awarded the half-star purely for this scene. I think the fact that I responded to this scene is pure luck on the filmmakers’ part: a cinematic fluke, if you will. When the scene ended, I didn’t feel that sense of ‘relief’ which you usually feel after a tense scene in a film. In fact, I wasn’t left shaken. The rape scene itself reminded me heavily of one of those comedians who just tell cheap cliché jokes which aim to offend, and where all the punch-lines are pretty much similar. You  briefly chuckle; the laugh is never remembered, and the gag never quoted.

How to recover from a harrowing experience such as brutal gang-rape – courtesy of Baise-Moi.

Following this, the two girls then go on a hedonistic rampage. The film then nudges towards us endless sex scenes and murder scenes. I use the word ‘nudges’ there because the film has literally no conviction with its content and subject matter at all. For violence or sex to be shocking or to stimulate any emotional response from the viewer, it has to be violently thrown towards our eyeballs with some form of visual flair or cinematic style. I am reminded of Kevin Smith’s directional style in Clerks. He presses the ‘record button’ and simply lets the actors ‘get on with it’. The same here. The record button is pressed and we are shown a recording of some sex and violence. Sex and violence on its own isn’t particularly shocking, it’s the ideas that lay behind them. I think the ‘point’ of the film is that the two girls go on this rampage for no reason whatsoever. The killings are random. If this is the case, then the notion of murders occurring without any motif is an unnerving one – but the film never takes advantage, thinking that by simply showing us bullets causing blood-wounds and penises going inside vaginas is simply enough. “A true thought, badly expressed, is a lie.”

The film is part of a new movement in cinema known as ‘New French Extremity’. One of the key auteurs, as I’ve already mentioned, in this movement, is Gaspar Noe – a man who in Enter the Void showed us a sex scene from inside of the vagina itself. No, I’m not joking. Now, you may find this disgusting or shocking or blunt or whatever – but this is exactly the point. This movement is a call-back to the 70s exploitation flicks and ‘video-nasties’. People would queue up to see these films which shocked, aroused and perversely entertained. These films were exhilarating and thrilling. The problem with Baise-Moi is that it is anything but. (And this isn’t necessarily because it doesn’t present us with a rather ‘original’ love-making scene).

Seedy, psychedelic head-trip. Gaspar Noe’s ‘Enter the Void’.

But this isn’t the case with the film – it’s all images and nothing else. Thus due to this, the film is beyond bland.

I think my reaction to the film was quite simply this:

Oh look, there’s a woman sucking a man’s penis. Oh look, he’s sucking her vagina. Oh look, they’ve gone into a bar and massacred everyone there. Oh look, they’re consuming drugs. Oh look, his penis is going inside of her. Oh look, he’s just orgasmed. Oh look, she’s just orgasmed. Oh look, they’re all dead. Oh look, he’s screaming in agony. Oh look, there’s more dead people. Oh look, she’s screaming in agony. Oh look, she just said a naughty word. Oh look, an orgy. Oh look, he just said a naughty word. Oh look, another orgy. Oh look, another penis going inside a vagina. Oh look…

To which my reaction to all of this was quite simply: “So what?”

Verdict:

Not shocking. Not exciting. Not entertaining. Not thrilling. Not horrifying. A trashy piece of nonsense which takes away any emotional reaction to the scenes that it’s in. So bland and dull that the names of the characters escape me, and I couldn’t even remember which one was ‘the rape-victim’ and which one was ‘the prostitute’.

The Human Centipede (First Sequence) (2009)

0.5 STARS

General Information:

Information below is taken from the following link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1467304/

18  92 min  –  Drama | Horror | Thriller  –   20 August 2010 (Ireland)

Director

Tom Six

Writers

Tom Six

Stars 

Dieter Laser; Ashley C. Williams ; Ashlynn Yennie

Plot:

Mad scientist, Dr Heiter (Dieter Laser) captures two girls on a tour across Europe to form his life-long fantasy: conjoining three people together, mouth to anus, to form “The Human Centipede”.

Review:

Before I start, I’d like to just say the history of how this movie came about. Tom Six jokingly said to a mate that paedophiles should be punished by having their mouths sowed to truck drivers’ anuses. That’s it. And if there’s more, I honestly don’t care, and don’t want to know.

Oscar Wilde once said that “bad art is the result of good intentions”. Perhaps this film was made with good intentions, but then again, could you call this film a work of art?

This movie is a lot of things. Being a “good movie” is unfortunately for our, dear director, Tom Six, not one of them. It’s a sick movie. But then again, aren’t all horror movies sick? There’s a theory called ‘pleasure for displeasure’. It explains why we watch horror films. We watch them because we like being frightened. We watch them because we like that thrill of adrenaline. We watch them because we like being left shaking by the end. We like being displeasured. Yet, The Human Centipede isn’t ‘pleasure for displeasure’. It’s ‘displeasure for displeasure’. If I had to personify this movie, it would be that weird eight-year old kid who always picks his nose in class and in the playground runs around chasing girls with dog-crap dripping off the end of a stick that he found on the ground.

A friend once told me that "the poster was the only good thing about this movie"...he was right

A good horror movie knows how to hit us, knows what fears to strike. A good horror movie prods and attacks are basic fears with visceral intensity. The fear of being alone. The fear of being followed. The fear of death. The fear of losing a loved one. The fear of the supernatural. Even the worst slasher movie attempts to scare us with these, The Human Centipede does not. Yes, people are followed, and people die – but the movie itself doesn’t attempt to scare us via these mere plot devices (and believe me, that’s all they actually are). It attempts to scare us with its concept: close-ups on the faces of the girls attached to each other’s close encounters of the pelvic kind, mucus oozing from one of the girls’ cheeks due to an infection, teeth being taken off, kneecaps cut open, the anus cut open, the section where the mad Dr Heiter demands that the ‘human centipede’ picks up a newspaper like a dog and gives it to him, the section where Katsuro – who’s at the front – has to ‘go to the toilet’, thereby force feeding the person in the middle with well…you know what I’m talking about.

Dr. Heiter has fun with his 'pet' by treating it like a dog...

The movie attempts to scare us with its concept rather than scaring us by attacking our fears. At the beginning of this review I compared this film to an eight-year old chasing girls with dog-crap on a stick. Shoving vile stuff in the viewer’s faces isn’t scary, it’s not. At first, it’s disgusting, and then…it’s boring.

Of course, there will be some horror-fans who like this movie, and find its concept interesting, different, and original compared to most horror films. Perhaps there’s a subtext to this film. Is Dr. Heiter a symbol of Josef Mengele, the infamous Nazi? Either way, I frankly don’t care.

There are other things which made me loathe this movie. Let’s look at the set-up for example. Two girls are in a car, they’re trying to get to a party which they’ve been invited to be some “cute German waiter”. But, oh dear! The tyre’s flattened! Seconds later, a car drives towards them until they’re side by side, revealing a perverted German man who mistakes them for being porn-stars. He offers to have sex with them, they scream and go ‘ewww’ and tell him to go away, which thankfully he does. From the start, the movie’s shoving weird sexual fetishes in our faces. But things get worse. Sooner or later the girls give up and walk out of the car and into the woods. One of them breaks down crying, and there’s the usual “hello!…help us” dialogue. Fortunately (or rather, unfortunately) one of them sees a light to a house. They knock on the door, and what man should luckily be behind their but the good old trusty Dr Heiter! Hooray! Effectively, all of that was a plot-device to lead to Tom Six’s weird threesome-like-you’ve-never-seen-it-before-extravaganza. All of that was there simply so he could show the world his concept.

Oh well, the cinematography was kinda nice.

Unfortunately I couldn't find any examples of nice cinematography on the internet for this film as most of them involve shots of the centipede itself (God knows why?...). Either way, observe how our director Tom Six has used a low-angle shot and 'hot windows' to accentuate the evil presence of the villain...

Verdict:

A movie that didn’t frighten, disturb or shock me. But rather made me want to either fall asleep or turn off the television. Go watch a David Cronenberg movie instead.

Evilution (2008)

0.5 STARS

General Information

The information below is taken from the following link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1262416/

18        Horror

DirectorChris ConleeWritors Brian Patrick O’Toole Stars Eric Peter-Kaiser; Sandra Ramírez; Tim Colceri

Plot:

An alien bacteria has the power to raise the dead to life again, the bacterium manages to get into the body of somebody living in a suburban apartment, and as the day progresses, the amount of zombies increases and increases…

Review:

I was flicking through channels on my sky plus box in an attempt to find a downright apocalyptic, depressing, gory, nightmarish zombie film which could be compared to 28 Days Later, but isn’t actually 28 Days Later. (As you do). Anyway, I came across the horror channel and found Evilution, the summary described it as an ‘apocalyptic horror’ with lots of gore and violence. So hey, I recorded. It sounded quite good, and I watched it with a friend of mine a week later.

Now, I must point out, I like to watch a film with an open-mind, I can suspend my disbelief higher than most people can.

The plot begins around about twenty minutes in, the character ‘Darren’ injects a gangster named ‘random’ with the bacterial serum God knows why, but hey, it’s probably a pathetic, not very well thought out plot device which the writer’s put in because they wanted to go out for a cup of coffee down their local cafe…I imagine. (I later find out that he did this to somehow make Random feel better, because Random had just been shot by a couple of gangsters).

Now, obviously, once this happens, Random turns into zombie, the process is slow, at first, he begins to convulse and shake, almost like he is having a fit.

Now, whilst this is happening, Darren pops around to Mandy’s room. Mandy is the eye-candy of the film, and that is her only purpose. (The director is perverted). Mandy and Darren then have brief passionate sex, for no real reason – and then later on in the film, Darren wants to save her. (As if you’d develop emotions with your one-night-stand. Pah-lease!)

Now, whilst Darren is pleasuring Mandy, Random’s symptoms gets worse and worse and he escapes. So in simple terms, Darren had sex with Mandy as a plot device so that Random could run around the apartment, bite someone and then allow the zombie-count to build. Simple as that.

Evilution is a genuinely dispacable pile of garbage spewed out of cinema’s backside, it is whimpering, cowering attempt at a horror film, I wasn’t frightened by it, I laughed at it.

Now, the characters are equally ridiculous, we have somne gangsters who just stay stuff like ‘yeah blad, innit’, an army officer who shouts all the time, and a science geek who is just well…geeky. Obviously, as in most zombie films, these characters must unite as a team to defend themselves from the zombies. In the case of Evilution, shouty-screamy-ex-army-officer just well…shouts and screams. Hey, that’s ‘acting’ for you.

Other ridiculous things occur in this film. There’s a hallway sequence where a big muscular bodybuilder and a young woman step out of the room wondering what all of the fuss is about. Then (surprise, surprise) zombies turn up; the bodybuilder man says ‘bring it!’ The girl, is wearing a towel…and because this film is so low and unwitty and misogynistic (*see random sex scene between Mandy and Darren) a random zombie rips the towel off her soso that she’s completely naked.

As I draw nearer to the conclusion of this review, I must reveal my main point: a good horror relies on atmosphere and its characters. Evilution lacked any atmosphere, in fact, there was none. It’s characters were simple stock characters, the scientist was just a nerd, the army character shouted all the time (so much so that he pulled quite hilarious facial expressions. I found this rather good. So much so, I rewound and played certain bits over and over again. For my own entertainment…I need to go out more).

Don’t waste your time with this.

Verdict:

A poor zombie film in every sense: laughable rather than scary, un-atmospheric rather than atmospheric, and characters I couldn’t care about rather than characters I could care about.