[UngodlyWarlock]

Amazing movie. I'm still thinking about it 3 days after watching it.
Absolutely brutal, horrifying, deplorable, painful, unrelenting....

SPOILERS (highlight)!!!!!
I thought at first the movie was going to be pretty standard with the overblown "Castle Freak" part. At that point, I was pretty sure the movie was just all hype and nothing else. Don't get me wrong, that part was creepy and when you imagine that that girl had been there for 15+ years is almost unbelievable, but compared to all the horror movies I have seen in my life, it still didn't affect me that much.

How could I have known that this was only the set-up to lure you into the world, then *ahem* beat you into submission in the last 30 minutes of the movie. The whole scene with the "black surgeon" was one of the most shocking scenes I have ever seen. Sure, it's not like we haven't seen a skinless person before in movies like Hellraiser 2, but that is fantastical! This....this was meant to be real. Not a demon or a zombie...a real person just barely hanging onto life. Absolutely insane.

The best part? The movie didn't just come off as (I hate the term, but I'll use it anyway) "torture porn". It had so much going on, so many subtleties....

I don't know if I'll be able to watch it again anytime soon...it's that good.

The movie is not for everyone, but to say it "sucked" blows my mind. The fact that it affected some of you so much should give a clear example that it *didn't* suck. My example is always Requiem for a Dream....there is so much BAD STUFF going on in that movie, I felt dirty after watching it. I had to call my mom! But it is unquestionably superb film-making. I believe this movie is also superb. To write it off as "more torture porn" is truly sad, but that is my opinion only.

-D