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Jörg Buttgereit
Jörg has an unhealthy fascination for death and extreme perversion but he doesn't exploit it, he explores it. His interesting, even artistic direction and use of music are effectively gripping, but his subject matter is almost always extreme and twisted, and his camera is unflinching and fearless. Buttgereit is a serious director with talent, and sometimes even has something to say. As such, he should not be compared to his peers like Ittenbach and Schnaas who deal with simple splatter. Brooding, artsy ruminations on suicide and death shown as a series of suicides intercut with scenes of a decomposing corpse. Death is explored as part of the cycle of life and as a solution for empty lives, depression, problems, the need for celebrity status and cult religion, etc. Atmospheric, depressing and dark, but devoid of any intellectual stimulation. Three short horror movies by three directors, whose only common theme is general German social issues. Although Buttgereit only contributes the shortest of the bunch, this marks a potential comeback after two decades, and his short is the most intriguing with several levels of interpretation: 'Final Girl' depicts a superficial young girl who is preoccupied with banal things, and talks extensively about her pet guinea pigs, their care and lack of love thereof, except that there is brutal and gory torture of a man in the background, as well as radio announcements about a killing in a local Muslim household. The movie is like the last five minutes of a psychological horror movie, drops hints of child abuse, and raises doubts whether what is happening is real or not, but the overall theme is one of detachment from bad things, whether they are personal or happening next door. 'Make a Wish', beyond its brutal and gory acts of violence, is the most political and problematic one, using a body-switch device to explore the relationship between Nazis and neo-Nazis with their victims, provoking its audience by drawing parallels between the perpetrators and their victims by purporting that a victim would abuse their power just the same if given the chance, and that the fact that they are victims is largely arbitrary. Which is only partially true, hence the problem. The third movie is the longest, and features a more conventional horror movie in the form of a Lovecraftian mix of sex, fantasy-obsessions, and mutant horror, featuring a man who meets a girl and discovers an exclusive club with access to a unique drug. The most explicit and fearless exploration of necrophilia with plenty of extra shock values added to boot. A man works for a company that cleans up death scenes. He shares a very unhealthy fascination with his girlfriend for cadavers, gore and body parts which he collects in jars at home. One day he brings back a rotting leaking corpse and they have a romantic threesome but then his girl dumps him and runs off with the corpse. Distraught, the man finds other ways to console himself which includes bathing in his own cat's guts, murdering and raping corpses and stabbing himself literally to a bloody orgasm. To the film's credit, it's not a simple shock-fest. The direction and style is interesting and it explores issues such as desensitization, comparing the gore while killing animals for food and people's fascination with horror. But let's face it, this is utterly vile. An artistic portrait of a very disturbed man, exploring the last days of a serial killer. This man kills Christian missionaries that come knocking at his door then takes pictures of their corpses in sexual positions, has guilty fantasies and dreams of his own body being disfigured and dismembered, imagines dentists pulling out his eyes, and vaginas with teeth (amongst other things). His relationship with the local whore is also ridden with guilt and obsessions as he drugs and molests her, leading him to the notorious scene where he nails his penis to a chair. Extremely moody, twisted and dark. Boy meets girl. Boy falls in love. Girl cheats on boy. Boy gets beat up. Boy rapes and impregnates girl. Girl gives birth. Baby turns into boy-monster. Boy-monster axes girl. Boy takes her heart back, literally. So how do you make a sequel for a movie about necrophilia when the protagonist is dead? The answer is obvious. This time around, the main protagonist is a female, however, who has a fling with the rotting, putrid corpse but then falls for a live man and therefore has to chop up her previous 'lover'. But she can't get rid of all the parts... So what is a girl to do when she gets bored of the new boyfriend who doesn't share her perverse tastes? Chop off his head while having sex and replace it with the rotting one of course! Yet again, Buttgereit explores and compares romance, sex, porn, necrophilia, gore and animal butchering and our varying sensitivities for them. It's artistic and well-done but simply too vile to recommend. |
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