Review: A Serbian Film (2010)

A Serbian Film (2010)

Not rated

Score: 2 out of 5

So, this is the movie that I'd heard so much about for so long. The version I watched edited out the worst portions of two of the most infamous scenes, but even so, I got a movie filled with gore, rape, beheadings, same-sex rape, incest, throats getting ripped out, child rape, cuckoldry, a penis being used as a murder weapon (three times), and did I mention the rape?

And I was bored.

Maybe I'm just jaded, but I had a hard time being genuinely shocked by A Serbian Film, the controversial horror film from (where else?) Serbia that, when it first made the film festival circuit nine years ago, had audiences of hardened horror fans pouring out of theaters scandalized by what they'd just watched. And that's a problem, because, despite its pretensions towards greater depth and commentary on Serbian society, shock value is really the only thing that A Serbian Film has going for it. The reason the "torture porn" boom of the 2000s wound up fizzling out, I feel, is because audiences eventually got desensitized by scenes of guts spilling and body parts ripping; you needed an actual plot and characterization to make audiences care about the victims. This film, released towards the tail end of that boom, tried to up the stakes by combining torture porn with literal porn, the victims not only getting murdered but also raped on top of it, but again, with the internet supplying grisly videos of real murder, execution, and depravity to anybody who wants to watch them, what was once shocking quickly grew quaint. Time caught up with what the filmmakers were trying to do here, and it was not kind.

The protagonist Miloš is a retired porn star who was renowned in the industry for his great gift: his ability to get his big dick hard at will, without even touching it, and fuck for hours without interruption. Short on cash and looking to support his wife and son, he takes an offer from a mysterious filmmaker named Vukmir, who is working on an avant garde porn film, to come out of retirement. And if you know this genre, you can probably figure out that Miloš has been hired to make a snuff film. Miloš figures it out too, but by then, it's too late.

While Miloš is the main character, Vukmir is probably the most interesting character in the film, as he is the film's attempt to say something and have a real message. He serves as a symbol of everything that the filmmakers think is wrong with Serbian cinema: grimly obsessed with suffering, victimhood, and the legacy of the Yugoslav wars while being dependent on foreign money and approval, painting a portrait of Serbia designed to pander to foreign stereotypes of the country. From what we see of the plot of the porn film he's making, it's about a woman who turned to prostitution to survive, disgracing her "war hero" husband in the process, and is filled with a lot of suffering; it checks off all the boxes. Vukmir's film is an exaggerated parody of a stereotypical "Serbian film", turned up to pornographic snuff film levels since that's what he thinks the world wants to see as the "real Serbia". And had the film focused on him, perhaps, as a villain protagonist, the satire might have landed a lot better. A deep dive into him as a character would have not only given the filmmakers more room to get in some digs at the film industry (digs that might've landed even beyond the Serbian context; a lot of smaller nations' film industries, from Canada to Poland, have similar issues with chasing "respectability" and the approval of highbrow foreign critics and backers even discounting Serbia's unique circumstances), it would've allowed viewers to join him in partaking in the depravity. As it stands, all the most terrible and disgusting moments in the film are things that happen to the main characters, which they are forced into, or which they witness after the fact. How much more harrowing would it be if, like the remake of Maniac, this film put the viewers in Vukmir's shoes and forced them to identify with him and his worldview? Instead of merely witnessing that scene which Vukmir shows to Miloš, how about we watch him film it?

As it stands, though, once the ball really gets rolling in the second act the film becomes a parade of brutality. I will admire the creativity of a lot of the scenes, and the manner in which they "go there"; many of the kills are scenarios that no Western horror film would dare show without risking an NC-17 rating and, in some countries, an outright ban (and indeed, this film was banned in several countries). It eventually starts to have an almost numbing effect, especially in light of my criticisms above, but make no mistake: this is still a movie that could undoubtedly shock those whose only experience with graphic horror comes from things like the Saw movies and other mainstream splatter fare, especially with how the film mixed its violence with pornography. The violence is by far the film's best quality, exhibiting boundless creativity in both the nature of some of the kills and in their depravity. If you're a gorehound looking for something a bit extra, rest assured that this film delivers.

The Bottom Line

For everyone else, though, there's not a whole lot here. I was distinctly unimpressed, and I don't think it's just me being desensitized to gore by having seen real ISIS videos; the satire the film was going for largely felt surface-level, leaving a movie that at times veered into the pretentious. If you're still curious, then by all means seek it out, but don't expect it to live up to its notorious reputation.