Writer(s): Srdjan Spasojevic, Aleksandar Radivojevic
Production Co.: Contra Film
Year of Release: 2010
Okay. Alright. Okay. Let's see here. If you're not afraid of mild spoilers, go ahead and read this review, if they piss you off, then don't. A Serbian Film is (go figure) a Serbian film that's been getting a lot of buzz throughout 2010 for being outrageously shocking. Now, before I go on my tangent, I would like to state that I have no problem with shock cinema whatsoever, I think the genre has produced some pretty wonderful and painfully profound films in the past (see also; Salo or the 120 Days of Sodom - Point and case). But this just takes the proverbial cake. Spasojevic seems to have set a goal for himself to create the most vile, wretched thing known to man, and in truth he has succeeded. BUT, he takes so many cheap shots not only with the events in the film, but with almost every aspect of it. The overoveroverover-dramatic lighting, over-editing, over-acting. Essentially the key word in the man's dictionary is excess. This isn't maximalism, this is excess. Unnecessary extras. This doesn't feel like a tortured soul pouring his heart out onto society as a reminder of our failures and everything else that makes humans so terrible (as is the generic mission statement for most films in the shock cinema genre). This just feels like some dick that wants to be known for shoving a phalic through a person's skull, or giving birth to a baby and immediately raping it to death. Sure there's some symbolism to be found here, especially within the line "One happy Serbian family" (paraphrasing), which is overtly obvious in itself. So there really isn't much that stimulates the mind here other than 'Serbia is bad', and 'cencorship is ghey'. By the end of the film, you feel like you've had your last ounce of innocence taken from you by a mocking adolescent, and with films like Salo or Cannibal Holocaust or Antichrist, you feel like you deserve it. It should leave you emotionally exhausted, like a long-overdue punishment. A Serbian Film just feels like a thirteen year old mugging you, you feel utterly cheated and robbed of something you had every right to keep. If I could sum my opinion up or get my point across in any way, it would be that this is one of the few films that genuinely made me quite angry once the ending credits rolled by (see also; Avatar).
Overall rating: 1.4
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