[Sym]

I wasn't entirely impressed, but this may be, unfortunately, because by my peers this film was driven with nothing but hype, the kinda people that dig watching online footage of people getting tortured and killed, and that's the mindset I took to it while watching, at least at first.

I definitely recognized it for something else though, but I have to say that the highbrow allure which the story aims for falls short in comparison to something like Le Calvaire or Martyrs. It's hard to take it really seriously when the few nasty scenes seem to define the film itself, (As decreed by many sources, not necessarily saying the film claims this itself, but with its story, this is how it felt to me.) and that's a bit sad since this film takes itself very seriously.

The famous scenes are something indeed, but I kind of had to laugh at the newporn scene. It might have shocked me a bit more had I seen an umbilical chord anywhere. Would have added to the realism. Plus Milo raping that guy in the eye? What the heck? That would work wonderfully in a slasher like Friday the Thirteenth, but the approach to realism that this film yearns for is shot to hell with scenes like that. But what do I know, maybe you can actually kill someone by raping them through the brain. Oh and the antagonist cheering on Milo after he smashes half his head on the floor...haha, right. It seems that everyone is so psychotic in this that it should belong to genres spawned in the seventies. Not too subtle...

I didn't dislike it though. There are different ways to view a movie, and if I don't get too technical about things, it was a whole lot of fun, although a bit dragging at times.