Subconscious Cruelty (1999)

User Rating:

5.1/10   

Director:

Karim Hussain

Writer:

Karim Hussain (writer)

Release Date:

13 April 2001 (Canada)

Genre:

Drama | Action | Crime | Horror

Plot Keywords:

Birth | Torture | Hook | Nudity | Religion

Cast

Brea Asher
Ivaylo Founev
Eric Pettigrew
Christopher Piggins

Directed by
Karim Hussain

Writing credits (in alphabetical order)
Karim Hussain		writer

Produced by
Mitch Davis	....	producer

Original Music by
Teruhiko Suzuki

Film Editing by
Karim Hussain

Art Direction by
Sonia Capogrecco
Patricia McNeil

Second Unit Director or Assistant Director
Patrick Tremblay	....	first assistant director

Sound Department
David Kristian	....	sound designer

Special Effects by
C.J. Goldman	....	special makeup effects
Philippe Spurrell	....	special projection effects

Camera and Electrical Department
Benoît Boucher	....	photographer: end titles

Production Companies

• Infliction Films

Distributors

• Albatros Film (Japan)
• Cinema Novo (Portugal)
• Infliction Films (Canada)
• New Select (Japan)
• Sazuma Trading (2005) (Austria) (DVD)

Also Known As:

Yposyneiditi sklirotita (Greece) (festival title) [el]

Runtime:

92 min | USA:80 min (DVD version)

Country:

Canada

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.66 : 1

Sound Mix:

Stereo

Certification:

Sweden:15

Filming Locations:

Canada

Company:

Infliction Films

Movie Connections:

Referenced in In the Belly of the Beast (2001)

Interesting art-house horror with plenty of WTF moments.

A gory, low budget, art-house horror with scenes of extreme nastiness, Subconscious Cruelty is not an easy film to watch for several reasons: it is extremely 'symbolic' (some might say pretentious); it has no standard narrative; and it features very unsettling imagery. It is, however, well directed and edited, and features some amazingly realistic effects and a pretty decent score.

Subconscious Cruelty starts as it means to go on, with a bizarre short segment entitled Ovarian Eyeball in which a naked woman on a table is sliced open; from her wound, an eyeball on an optic nerve is produced. It makes no sense (to me at least), but is certainly visually arresting.

And so the weirdness continues, with a second 'story', Human Larvae, about a guy who wishes to make a mockery of the miracle of birth by killing his sister's newborn child as it is leaving the womb. This one is without a doubt the vilest story I have ever seen committed to celluloid and should be seen only by those with a very strong stomach.

Part three, Rebirth, is less intense, with a bunch of naked people rolling around in mud, fellating tree branches and shagging pools of blood! I quite enjoyed this bit after the gruelling nature of Human Larvae.

The final segment, Right Brain/Martyrdom, fuses religious symbolism with female nekkidness and gore, and is a shocking slice of sacrilegious depravity guaranteed to upset Christians everywhere.

I can't say that I enjoyed director Karim Hussain's debut, and would hesitate recommending it to pretty much everyone I know, but I imagine that it will definitely have a cult following amongst those people who prefer to delve into cinema's weirder output, such as the films of Lynch, Jodorowsky or Miike.