Afterwards, you'll need to wash

Rating: 1/10 (2 June 2007)

It's really hard to review this film without using bad words, which I know IMDb wouldn't allow. So I'll try to keep things civil. This is a sick, sick film. And NOT in the good way. Not in the "Tarantino is so cool because of the way he looks at violence" kind of way. Just in the perverted, amoral, sick-MINDED, "somebody seriously needs to get some therapy" kind of way. Yeah, THAT kind of sick. The kind of sick film that you can't have any fun watching because you can tell the person who made it is truly as depraved as he seems. The kind of "horror" film that offers no horror other than what is BEHIND the scenes: the horror of Eli Roth's mind, the filth and sleaze that lies within it. The kind of film where physical violence is conceptualized as a kind of pornography and where you're supposed to get your "I Heart Torture" jollies watching it. Think snuff films. Think those "Real Death" videos that you see in the bin at the Slurp-n-Snort on the interstate. That's the level that Roth/Tarantino were stopping to here, and, though someone will certainly argue that Roth is so "cool" because he draws your attention to social phenomena blah blah blah mental masturbation and it's a reflection of intellectual spew which shows us how we artist wannabe claptrap.... No, it's petty, it's disgusting, it's vile, it's corrupt, it's debauched -- and Eli Roth wants you to think it's art.