A Serbian Film

"A Serbian Film" is a feature so monstrous that the mere thought of it makes me tremble with rage. Here is a film so desperate to cause nationwide controversy that it ends up butchering and embarrassing itself in the process. It is a film that goes too far, keeps on going, and doesn't know when it should stop. In the end, it's gone so far that all redeemable factors (and there were a few) are mere blurs in the distance, absent from memory.

The film, as the title suggests, is Serbian, directed and co-written by first-time filmmaker Srdjan Spasojevic. Its intention is to satirise the titular country's modern politics in the most brutal methods possible, but these aims all become lost and drowned in the gratuitous exploitation bleeding and ejaculating in almost every frame -- the film suffers massively from its extraordinarily bleak displays of inhuman violence.

It begins with a raunchy clip from a goofy porn film starring David Spade look-alike Milos (Srdjan Todorovic, "Black Cat, White Cat") as he, err, gets it on with a frisky lady. This is being watched by the porn star's six-year-old son, Petar, who has found one of daddy's naughty DVDs. Kids grow up so fast these days.

Milos has been out of work for quite some time, strapped for cash, though his homelife is carefree. One day, he meets up with former co-star Lejla (Katarina Zutic, "The Robber of the Third Reich"), who proposes that he take a role in a new, ahem, art film being directed by some wealthy dude called Vukmir (Sergej Trifunovic, "Next").

Milos and Vukmir meet, the latter turning out to be a passionate, massively eccentric XXX filmmaker with a keen and distinct vision. Milos very reluctantly signs a contract to star in Vukmir's new picture, despite the director's insistence that the well-endowed actor know nothing until filming begins.

Well, shooting begins, and so sparks the trip to drugged-up madness Milos ventures into. Turns out this project is a fucked-up-beyond-belief snuff film, in which Milos (according to Vukmir) is the only one not "a victim." We’re amongst the victims, I guess. Things go from a little odd to a bit creepy to newborn-baby-raping levels of insanity, as Milos is forced to take part in the sick feature against his sober, clear-thinking will.

To sum up "A Serbian Film" would be to look up "horrifying" and "repulsive" in every thesaurus known to man. This frankly unforgivable piece of trash goes from bad to worse to sickening to traumatising, the film's sole objective to grin as it vomits down the viewer's throat.

Necrophilia and paedophilia are paraded with stomach-churning glee, as our once-sympathetic "hero," in a drug-pumped state, spreads his seed like a sex maniac on Viagra. As the film goes on, he becomes more and more loathsome, the fact that he's intoxicated out of his mind completely irrelevant. His actions are far too barbaric for us to feel sorry for him.

An unconscious toddler is raped, a screaming one-minute-old baby is raped, chained-up women are raped, a passed-out man is sodomised, a recently-toothless woman suffocates from a penis shoved down her throat, a woman is beheaded with a machete during forced sex, and a man is literally skull-fucked by a penis penetrating his eye socket.

This movie is a fucking nightmare, containing a jaw-dropping amount of scenes so clearly filmed just so that the director could sit at the premiere and giggle away at the groaning, moaning audience members fainting around him. Never have I been more put-off by a film than this Serbian one, and never will I even consider watching it again.

It's this grotesqueness that overshadows the genuinely decent filmmaking presented in terms of visuals and over-the-top acting performances, both of which are actually rather splendid, especially the sharp and richly atmospheric cinematography. It's sad that the film's second half decides to take a dump on the talents on display, as it descends into vomit-encouraging stupidity, obsessively yanking out the film's sparkly teeth with a pair of rusty pliers.

"A Serbian Film" will inevitably hold a cult status as time goes by, if only for the envelope-shoving of the sexualised gore and torturous violence. It's sick, it's fucked up, it's absolutely worthless, and I fucking despised it. I could easily give this film a couple of marks for the cinematography or the acting, but a film this mortifying in nature really doesn't deserve it.

0/10