Todd Solondz wannabe short film that may or may not be a satire or melodrama or both about rape in the family. On a positive note, the actor who played the father was quite good. Everyone else were quite poor in comparison, and the father was the closest to a fleshed out character (mostly the son, the mom's passable, but it's whoever the trying-but-tone-deaf son that sinks a lot of major dramatic scenes. And... yeah, I got nothing.
There's nothing satirical about this because I can't tell exactly if it's satirizing anything - is it a take off on over-wrought TV melodramas? Is it trying to go another step further than Solondz or to an extent Von Trier accomplish because they have more pointed aims in their icky subject matter? Or is it a guy who wants to SHOCK us all with something that is intentionally WTF like (spoiler) a father being raped by his son? It's a confused film that, near the end, had me laughing unintentionally at how wild the melodramatics get. A YouTube comment, of all things, summed it up for me: Tyler Perry on steroids.
I think it's mostly about the shock factor when it comes to something like this; if I was told this was made as something that could get on Adult Swim or something (anyone who's seen The House Has People In It might get what I mean), I might believe that person or source. And while I should praise it for getting in and out with what it's doing as far as what happens to victims of sexual assault (the son, make no mistake, is a master manipulator, and I couldn't find any room for ambiguity like, say, if the father had abused him when he was much younger and this is his payback - he's just a suck individual), even with that it almost feels a few minutes too long.
I can get why it's causing an uproar online - why exactly it resurfaced five years later after it's Slamdance premiere, I'm sure I don't know - but I wouldn't recommend watching it unless you're out to intentionally shock yourself or those around you. To make it more stark, it's akin to seeking out 2 Girls 1 Cup from years back; what do you EXPECT is going to be your reaction to this, despite it being shot on 35mm film (thank you, AFI?)
There's nothing satirical about this because I can't tell exactly if it's satirizing anything - is it a take off on over-wrought TV melodramas? Is it trying to go another step further than Solondz or to an extent Von Trier accomplish because they have more pointed aims in their icky subject matter? Or is it a guy who wants to SHOCK us all with something that is intentionally WTF like (spoiler) a father being raped by his son? It's a confused film that, near the end, had me laughing unintentionally at how wild the melodramatics get. A YouTube comment, of all things, summed it up for me: Tyler Perry on steroids.
I think it's mostly about the shock factor when it comes to something like this; if I was told this was made as something that could get on Adult Swim or something (anyone who's seen The House Has People In It might get what I mean), I might believe that person or source. And while I should praise it for getting in and out with what it's doing as far as what happens to victims of sexual assault (the son, make no mistake, is a master manipulator, and I couldn't find any room for ambiguity like, say, if the father had abused him when he was much younger and this is his payback - he's just a suck individual), even with that it almost feels a few minutes too long.
I can get why it's causing an uproar online - why exactly it resurfaced five years later after it's Slamdance premiere, I'm sure I don't know - but I wouldn't recommend watching it unless you're out to intentionally shock yourself or those around you. To make it more stark, it's akin to seeking out 2 Girls 1 Cup from years back; what do you EXPECT is going to be your reaction to this, despite it being shot on 35mm film (thank you, AFI?)