![]() While your average filmviewer may well heed these warnings (and is well advised to do so), those of us drawn to gore may become too curious to resist. Web bloggers and critics alike both admire and abhor the film, often simultaneously, and most warn potential viewers to stay well away. The project, filmed and financed by evil philosopher-mastermind Vukmir, turns out to be an extended snuff film featuring everything from torture to necrophilia to the rape of a newborn baby.Ī Serbian Film’s cult potential is apparent from its notoriety alone: with four and a half minutes of cuts it is the BBFC’s most censored film since 1994, and the director of Spain’s Sitges Film Festival was charged with screening child pornography after showing an uncensored version of it. ![]() The film follows Milos, an aging porn star brought out of retirement in order to do one final project, an “artistic” porno for export to foreign markets. While many have called The Human Centipede the most depraved and disgusting film of recent years, the lesser known but significantly more violent A Serbian Film is undoubtedly more deserving of the title. Splice may not be a cult film yet, but it has more than enough (an excess, even) of the right ingredients to become one. The transgression of generic boundaries arguably isn’t all that unusual anymore, but Splice’s “bad” subject matter - namely, controversial issues of genetic engineering, interspecies sex, incest, “gender-fucking” and abortion (“we just need to know if we can generate a sustainable embryo, then we destroy it”) - more than makes up for this.Īnd the cherry on the sundae? A sex scene that has sparked the exclamation, “They wouldn’t!?” amongst a large number of viewers. The last 10 minutes of the film are pure horror movie/creature feature, but up to that point it’s a mix of science fiction, comedy, thriller, drama and romance. But the splicing does not end at genes: one can also splice film, and Natali spliced together many genres (a word that of course closely resembles “genes”) in creating Splice. The word “splice” itself refers to the genetic cocktail that results in the film’s creature, the polymonstrous Dren (her name is ‘nerd’ spelled backwards). Splice is transgressive in everything, from its subject matter, style, and morality, all the way to its funding (a co-production between Canada, France and the U.S.) and its casting: leads, Clive (Adrien Brody) and Elsa (Sarah Polley) - whose names aptly allude to James Whale’s Bride of Frankenstein - present the unusual pairing of an Hollywood hunk and a Canadian indie film star. ![]() ![]() One common thread among the many definitions of “cult film” is transgression, and Vincenzo Natali’s films ( Cube, Nothing) have this in abundance. You will find below a number of voices, largely in favour of the films just mentioned, that raise questions about how polarizing the issue of cult can be.ĭo they do it like the mammals on the Discovery Channel? The renegade scientists of Splice, and their creatures, certainly do it differently. The following films drew a lot of heated commentary in our survey, much of it interrogating the term cult: can a film with a popular (or hyped?) reception trajectory such as Paranormal Activity be a cult? Can a film that solicits transgression the way Splice does (or does it?) be a ‘real cult’? Isn’t the sexploitation and politics combination of The Glamorous Life of Sachiko Hanai an indication that paracinematic protocols are programmable? Isn’t the gory excess of A Serbian Film, even in its hyperbole, calculated? Well, yes, say some, and no say others. The following films drew a lot of heated commentary in our survey, much of it interrogating the term cult.
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