Some films that I'm told are very good, and intend to view, but have yet to summon the willpower to subject myself to:
Irréversible
Hostel
Martyrs
Antichrist
I have never seen Marytyrs but
Hostel is nothing more than a slasher/gore film and is as boring as the blood splattered on the walls. Its excels in excess that is all.
Irreversible and Antichrist on the other hand are Director's films, or art house films as some would call them, that are neither gory nor scary but do have the capacity to make the viewer terribly uncomfortable...horrified if you will by the simple art of not showing the expected in the ways we have been trained to view film. They break format completely and what's worse is the horror is in offering psychological truths we are not supposed to peer into.
'Irreversible'; Gaspar Noe has you handcuffed to the perverse and forced to view violence without its petticoat on. The rape scene is the probably the most brutal ever filmed but its unbearable to watch simply because it is so ruthless and ugly and without pity not because there is blood and gore or even a weapon. When you fit that scene into the rest of the film that cycles from the end of the story back to the beginning, something that worked surprisingly well, it is also taking us from gutter, that dark place where everyone feeds their strange lusts to a comfortable world full of light, predictability and promise and its there right at the end you are confronted with the horror.
I would definitely would suggest this film.
Antichrist is brilliant! But I think you have to know a little about Lars Von Triers films before you go prancing off into this one. If you want to watch it because you have heard of a woman cutting off her clit then don't bother watching it. If you think you are watching a 'horror' movie in the classic sense then you will have Triers giggling in the background as you sit and wait for monster to jump out of the woods. He's another pervert. He takes all of the cinematic clues, frames, templates and formulas the lazy Hollywood filmmakers utilize all the time and the audience have carved into their heads and he twists them so when you are watching his films you are AWAKE. Not dreaming but awake. When you watch the pristine black and white shot moving slowly in time of the woman having sex with her husband, remaining dilatory under his dick and at the hight of pleasure watching as her toddler falls out the window as he made his way to the open window to see the snowflakes...well you will come to the place where a woman cutting off her clit has more symbolic meaning than just the discomfort of the audience. The film is long and wordy and there language seems to change when they enter the woods as if he wants to manipulate alpha activity and lull you into a hypnotic state, something he's used before in previous films like 'Europa'. Perhaps the audience feels less complicit when they are entranced.
Michael Haneka's 'Cache' for example was one of the most disturbing films I have seen in a while, it seeped into me and I couldn't wash it off. Horrifying? Only if you think of it in terms of eternal return.
But anyway 'Antichrist' takes patience or as is expressed at one point in the film 'Chaos Reigns' (still want that on a t-shirt). This is a film about 'woman' honey, not little miss eve(il) running around Eden but your wife! Go and watch that movie and I will be keen to see if you can come back and tell me where exactly does the 'horror' lie. Its there but not in the obvious of tricks he knows viewers are expecting. If you can find it get back to us because you can write a dissertation on the damn thing. Just too bad no one here would have seen it nor get past the titty.
If you have any interest for Haneka or Trier as filmmakers then you should really look for Korean filmmaker Kim Ki Duk. I still have a sneaky suspicion that Trier's 'Antichrist' was inspired by Kim Ki Duk's 'The Isle'.
Kim Ki Duk's 'Bad Guy', 'Samaritan Girl', '3-Iron', 'Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter...and Spring'. They are all simply brilliant and quite unique.
Hostel couldn't hold a candle to any of of those films even as it runs around wildly pretending to offer up 'horror' to the viewer by stabbing itself in the butt several times saying 'See? See?'. You may find it mildly interesting if you're like 14.
