Check out THIS piece of shit! “Grotesque” is an independent Japanese horror film… ooh! Independent! It’s often code for “Lower Your Expectations!” There are three kinds of independent movies when it comes to hyping a movie (Trigger Warning: Severely unqualified information ahead…I have no idea what I’m talking about, I’m not a Hollywood insider or even someone with a community college film degree, I’m just a guy who writes dumb stuff that I think is funny and hopes no one calls me on my bullshit). There’s your basic “Independent” which can be anything, it could even be good. It could even be better than major market stuff. Then there’s your low-budget, no-budget, micro-budget etc. independent… made via crowdsource, or a bank loan, or shot on a cellphone, and the sheer audacity and pluck involved is something we have to marvel at and say “Well good for you!” even if it’s a complete piece of shit that all the big critics will call “Ahead of its time!” or “Edgy and brilliant!” even when the actual audience review it as “Total stinkerama!” Thirdly, you have your big-budget independent. Often backed by major industry players, not “some plucky upstart.”
FYI whenever I use words like “plucky” you can be certain that I’m being snotty and sarcastic.
These are not really independent, are they? They’re pretendependent. It’s a small studio production that is new and exciting and completely independent save for all the big money investments from Disney or Turner or IFC or A24 or Netflix or whatnot that they rely on. You could even say they “depend” on it.
I guess the lines are blurry on what is truly independent, and while you’ll have plenty of Wes Andersons and Quentin Tarantinos out there making solid (usually) indie films, you’ll also have a massive glut of DIY cellphone bad-idea pieces of phlegm all over the freebie streamers. Like this one!
“Grotesque” fits its title. It’s 73 minutes of thinly-premised splatter. Neat! A mad scientist sort abducts a couple from the streets of BlackAndWhite’istan, ties them up in his hospital dungeon warehouse, and then just fucks with them for the next hour and three minutes.
That’s it. He stabs them in the mouth and stabs them in the stomach then licks an eyeball and taunts them and brushes their cat’s fur the wrong way then…
(pleasant flashback sequence that reminds you people can have nice days sometimes)
…then back to punches in the vagina and vomit through the gag followed by nipple twisting and butt tickling (fun fact, there is in fact no butt tickling) and pants pissing and coffee and cake while listening to classical music, because mad scientist sorts only listen to classical music. Never yacht rock, never folk, and definitely never Van Halen.
After that, it’s some brief conversation. Questions about their romantic life, and a “Goodness me where are my manners? I forgot to mention that if you let me have some brutal fun at your expense, just for a little while, I’ll let you go, promise no foolin’ cross my heart hope to die stick a needle up your butt.”
Great, so now it’s her turn. Yesterday the guy got all the stabbings and punchings and butt tickling (there’s no butt tickling) and barfing all over the place. Today the mad scientist lets go with a vicious torrent of caressing, gentle kisses and a handjob, followed by a handie for the boyfriend.
The monster.
From there we’re chopping off body parts and making jewelry out of them, some amputation just for fun, and then some genital mutilation. “I’m gonna torture you now instead of her, you’d die for her, right?” “Dude you abducted us from our first date, I don’t even know her middle name!”
It’s pretty much a lot of that for the next half hour. Buckets of blood and body parts on the floor and spikes driven into stuff, promises of freedom and even a period where he nurses them back to health… but then its “Psych!” and back to the business with a bunch of eyeball stuff and intestine stuff and butt tickling (there’s no butt tickling) and eating stuff you’re not supposed to eat.
It’s a short movie, total exploitation with zero plot development, but I suppose that was the point, the director stickin’ it to the morality squad! Eh, whatever. It’s an hour of torture porn with no point to it except to show the viewer an hour of torture porn with fun sound effects.