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Originally Posted by Alex Riviello
Sure, I'll put up a review if you guys want.
Didn't Butane cover this years ago on the site? I remember someone being disgusted over it.
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I got pretty riled up by it, but only because of the nadir of creativity that this new breed of shock horror seem to thrive on. As if the concept of "evil" is enough to justify the content in and of itself. With no exploration of anything except depressingly banal mundanity that's the antithesis of its presumabley existential introspection of casual sadsim. It's twaddle.
Cannibal Holocaust provides a neat. conceptual framework for its brutality that begs the audience to engage what their spectatorship means. August Undeground just asks us to gag over and over for no other purpose than it can. It's anti-horror.
Just found my original post about it:
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Does anyone over the age of 17 really want to shell out cash on a two disc version of this sophomoric, juvenile and ultimately rather boring exercise in self-promotion ? (Let's not kid ourselves, not matter how many credits the not untalented Vogel and crew have on low budget productions, this is a glorified showreel with a few non-ticket holders to the local metal club night helping out). I know there are some ultra-rabid cover-all horror fans, with bulging collections who'll take a philanthropic view to this picture and it's attempted dark undercurrents, those who'll essentially get it for completions sake. Or those who want a career in FX (though I'd tell them to just by Tom Savini's Grand Illusions book). Great. I love horror from cheap and old to gloriously over the top and forward thinking. But this ?
The whole AU clique puzzles the hell out of me. On one hand it's not like In A Glass Cage or 120 Days Of Sodom or something with a genuine subtext to its catalogue of "horrors". On the other, it's not even some depraved work of madness that should be pulled from public consumption.
It wishes.
Because it's relentlessly dull.
It's like a kid running into church and screaming a passage from De Sade at the priest and calling him a cnut. On some surface level it's shocking and you might be enlightened by his tonal enunciation, but has all the meaningfulness of involuntary defecation in one's shorts. And about the same artistic merits too.
As a special effects extravaganza (and it is one - this isn't meant to be a serious drama enlivened by some seamless effects work - it's a gore flick) is it really any better than Peter Jackon's Braindead ? No, they're not. Neither pictures is particularly realistic, but one picture realises the futility of realism so is much more effective and inventive because of it. The other just has supposedly a more morbid agenda which, sorry to say, doesn't substitute for depth, well sculpted though it maybe.
Is the picture really an any more serious, intelligent dissection on the bland, everyday terror of serial killers than Henry? This is surely the most rhetorical question ever. Not a hope in hell.
Is the lo-fi camerawork really any more effective and real because of its intentional shoddiness ? Or is it an easy get-out for people that actually aren't particularly good photographers.
It's taboo busting and little else. But no more so than the real animal slaughter in 70's Italian pictures and sure to become as innocuously annoying in years to come. It's not disturbing, just faintly tasteless. It's not probing, just fairly ordinary in its depiction of vicious acts. It's not relentless, just far too long at barely over an feature running time.
There's a Nine Inch Nails video that achieves everything AU and its sequel hoped to achieve. It's a terrible and disturbing short about a guy tortured with a blow torch. It not only achieves a quite devastating effect with chilling ease and nonchalance, it does it in around 4 minutes.
In terms of something longer, Nacho Cerda's Aftermath is 100 times more engrossing, moving, terrifying and enlightening about the human condition. With better gore effects too, if you want to shallow about it.
I understand Murder Set Pieces (also featuring Vogel's work) is of similar gross aesthetic, judging by Fangoria's review. |
Am I prude in my older age ? Maybe. But I'm extremely comfortable with that.
