When checking out the LB page for this film briefly, before I watched, I saw that the people I follow have wildly differing opinions on the film, with the largest majority either full force hating or loving it. Honestly, this response was my catalyst for looking into it, I wanted to see what provoked that in them. Unfortunately, not to be a fence sitter, but my viewing put me (almost) squarely in the middle.
The film has some absolutely DISGUSTING and well executed body horror going for it, an intriguing third act reveal, and some lengthy, dialogue-free moments to help key us into the characters in the moment, but (big BUT here), it also has such drastically inconsistent characterization of the main character.
SPOILER DISCUSSION :
Rape is a very delicate topic to discuss, and even more so to discuss in a motion picture. It is a perverse act of abuse with often life long repercussions. That's not to say a film should never portray it, because I believe art is humanities way of emotionally processing our world around us, and that should include the negatives as well as the positives. However, the film frames itself around a rapist, and spends the first two acts trying to get us to connect and empathize with him, his trauma and frequently visually shown PTSD that led him to the house the film is set in, only to pull the rug on us in act three, to reveal his heinous act and claim he has zero guilt, internally about it; which came off counter intuitive and very disrespectful for the topic in discussion.
When checking out the LB page for this film briefly, before I watched, I saw that the people I follow have wildly differing opinions on the film, with the largest majority either full force hating or loving it. Honestly, this response was my catalyst for looking into it, I wanted to see what provoked that in them. Unfortunately, not to be a fence sitter, but my viewing put me (almost) squarely in the middle.
The film has some absolutely DISGUSTING and well executed body horror going for it, an intriguing third act reveal, and some lengthy, dialogue-free moments to help key us into the characters in the moment, but (big BUT here), it also has such drastically inconsistent characterization of the main character.
SPOILER DISCUSSION :
Rape is a very delicate topic to discuss, and even more so to discuss in a motion picture. It is a perverse act of abuse with often life long repercussions. That's not to say a film should never portray it, because I believe art is humanities way of emotionally processing our world around us, and that should include the negatives as well as the positives. However, the film frames itself around a rapist, and spends the first two acts trying to get us to connect and empathize with him, his trauma and frequently visually shown PTSD that led him to the house the film is set in, only to pull the rug on us in act three, to reveal his heinous act and claim he has zero guilt, internally about it; which came off counter intuitive and very disrespectful for the topic in discussion.
