[Sicknero]

Last night's viewing...

August Underground
August Underground's Mordum
August Underground's Penance

Nasty. And while the first film is bad enough, it's Disney compared to Mordum.

Enjoy definitely isn't a word I'd use here, but I couldn't help myself watching all three (partly because I was curious to see if the title "Penance" meant that these sadistic killers would get their come-uppance). I guess that in part there's a compulsion to see just how bad it's going to get, how far it will go. I've never seen a real-life train wreck or motorway pile-up, but I'd imagine the complusion to watch that people describe ("I couldn't turn my eyes away..") is somewhat similar.

The degraded analogue film, the shaky hand-held home-movie footage (accompanied often by incessant, sadistic laughter and giggling), the exceptional realism and convincing acting (a lot of which is unscripted I gather) all make it very easy to forget that you're watching a fiction rather than real events unfolding, while also making for an uneasy sense of involvement in the events depicted.

The inclusion of "down time" (as one reviewer calls it) - i.e. everyday home-movie footage of principle sadist Peter (played by producer/director Fred Vogel) and his assorted friends/victims doing everyday stuff - only adds to the immersion. The fact that a lot of stuff happens wholly or partly out of shot does nothing to mitigate the horror and revulsion either. There's a fair amount of black humour which in other films might be entertaining, but in August the realism is just too intense for me to find any of it funny.

Absolutely no plot, other than the debatable exception of Penance where we get to see the deterioration of the relationship between Peter and his girlfriend Crusty.

I read an interview with Vogel, where he said something about people feeling uncomfortable being in the same room with him after seeing August... can't say I'm entirely surprised.