Gurotesuku, or Grotesque as it's more commonly known amongst English speaking audiences, is set in Japan & starts as a guy (Shigeo Ôsako) attacks a couple (Hiroaki Kawatsure & Tsugumi Nagasawa) who are on a first date, he knocks them out with a hammer & puts then in his van. When the couple regain consciousness they find themselves in a small room, ball gagged & tied to rotating tables. The guy stands there & makes it clear to both that he will torture them & if their will to survive is strong enough & he gets sexually aroused enough he will spare them, however once the unbearable torture begins how long can the captives hold out for...
Also known under the title Grotesque: Unrated Version which was what the version I saw was called this Japanese extreme torture horror flick was directed by Kôji Shiraishi & was recently banned here in the UK which has predictably had the effect that everyone now wants to see it because it's 'banned' whereas if Gurotesuku had been rated 18 without any fuss no-one would ever have heard of it & it would have sold a few hundred copies on DVD at most. Hell I will openly admit the only reason I bothered to track a copy down & watch it was because it had been banned & not because I wanted to watch it, to be brutally honest I don't really have a problem with the film & I personally would have no problem with this being made available to adults who want to see it but I don't work at the BBFC (the British film censor board) so it wasn't up to me... Anyway, what we have here is a film almost totally devoid of any meaningful narrative or plot & an increasingly boring conveyor belt of sadism, humiliation & torture as some guy (we never find out who he is or his name) gets sexually turned on by watching other people suffer & try to survive & cope with horrible injuries he inflicts upon them. That's it really. The majority of Gurotesuku has a minimalist documentary feel about it as it focuses completely on one aspect in a voyeuristic way but then the makers pull a bizarre ending out of the blue that seems to contradict the deadly serious harsh realistic brutality that preceded it with a silly dark comedic end that involved a flying severed living head & motives for the killer that amount to him smelling which felt like it was more suited to The Evil Dead (1982) than a film attempting to come across as snuff. At only 73 minutes it's short, it does have some impact because of the brutality of it although I don't really know who it would appeal to, it's certainly not a film you would sit down with your mates & watch, unless you have weird mates. Not worth the notoriety that the recent BBFC ban will undoubtedly give it to be honest, this is just a Saw or Hostel film without any of the plot or character development or sophistication.
Although well made there's a lot of quick edits & shaky hand-held camera movement which gets annoying. Despite what you may hear Gurotesuku isn't that extreme, it's just that it's unrelenting & it's torture scene after torture scene without any chance to take a breather between them & I didn't think any one particular moment was any more graphic or disturbing than anything from the aforementioned Saw or Hostel films. There's some blood splatter, needles are stuck into people, hands are cut off with a chainsaw, severed fingers are seen, an arm is chopped off, a head is chopped off, a woman has her nipples cut off with scissors, someones guts are pulled out & this guy hammers nails into his victims testicles that isn't overly graphic but the mere thought of it will send shivers down any mans spine & he also cuts his penis off which again isn't actually shown (due to a well placed sheet) but it's clear what is happening. The special effects are pretty good actually although for such a modern film that is expected. The constant juxtaposition of classical elegant music on the soundtrack that conflicted with the vile nastiness of the torture on screen got a little boring & repetitive by the end.
Gurotesuku actually reminded me of the Guinea Pig Japanese series of films & in particular Guinea Pig: Devil's Experiment (1985) & Guinea Pig: Flowers of Flesh and Blood (1985) both of which were also pseudo snuff films supposedly showing real torture & murder. The acting is quite good, although the spoken dialogue is Japanese it's quite intense & the actor's do a decent job.
Gurotesuku is a film which will now be sought after & become notorious for nothing more than a bunch of people saying it should be banned in the UK for no good reason as far as I can see & quite frankly it doesn't really deserve the publicity since it's not that good & has no real story, artistic value or social relevance beyond two people being tortured & eventually murdered.
Also known under the title Grotesque: Unrated Version which was what the version I saw was called this Japanese extreme torture horror flick was directed by Kôji Shiraishi & was recently banned here in the UK which has predictably had the effect that everyone now wants to see it because it's 'banned' whereas if Gurotesuku had been rated 18 without any fuss no-one would ever have heard of it & it would have sold a few hundred copies on DVD at most. Hell I will openly admit the only reason I bothered to track a copy down & watch it was because it had been banned & not because I wanted to watch it, to be brutally honest I don't really have a problem with the film & I personally would have no problem with this being made available to adults who want to see it but I don't work at the BBFC (the British film censor board) so it wasn't up to me... Anyway, what we have here is a film almost totally devoid of any meaningful narrative or plot & an increasingly boring conveyor belt of sadism, humiliation & torture as some guy (we never find out who he is or his name) gets sexually turned on by watching other people suffer & try to survive & cope with horrible injuries he inflicts upon them. That's it really. The majority of Gurotesuku has a minimalist documentary feel about it as it focuses completely on one aspect in a voyeuristic way but then the makers pull a bizarre ending out of the blue that seems to contradict the deadly serious harsh realistic brutality that preceded it with a silly dark comedic end that involved a flying severed living head & motives for the killer that amount to him smelling which felt like it was more suited to The Evil Dead (1982) than a film attempting to come across as snuff. At only 73 minutes it's short, it does have some impact because of the brutality of it although I don't really know who it would appeal to, it's certainly not a film you would sit down with your mates & watch, unless you have weird mates. Not worth the notoriety that the recent BBFC ban will undoubtedly give it to be honest, this is just a Saw or Hostel film without any of the plot or character development or sophistication.
Although well made there's a lot of quick edits & shaky hand-held camera movement which gets annoying. Despite what you may hear Gurotesuku isn't that extreme, it's just that it's unrelenting & it's torture scene after torture scene without any chance to take a breather between them & I didn't think any one particular moment was any more graphic or disturbing than anything from the aforementioned Saw or Hostel films. There's some blood splatter, needles are stuck into people, hands are cut off with a chainsaw, severed fingers are seen, an arm is chopped off, a head is chopped off, a woman has her nipples cut off with scissors, someones guts are pulled out & this guy hammers nails into his victims testicles that isn't overly graphic but the mere thought of it will send shivers down any mans spine & he also cuts his penis off which again isn't actually shown (due to a well placed sheet) but it's clear what is happening. The special effects are pretty good actually although for such a modern film that is expected. The constant juxtaposition of classical elegant music on the soundtrack that conflicted with the vile nastiness of the torture on screen got a little boring & repetitive by the end.
Gurotesuku actually reminded me of the Guinea Pig Japanese series of films & in particular Guinea Pig: Devil's Experiment (1985) & Guinea Pig: Flowers of Flesh and Blood (1985) both of which were also pseudo snuff films supposedly showing real torture & murder. The acting is quite good, although the spoken dialogue is Japanese it's quite intense & the actor's do a decent job.
Gurotesuku is a film which will now be sought after & become notorious for nothing more than a bunch of people saying it should be banned in the UK for no good reason as far as I can see & quite frankly it doesn't really deserve the publicity since it's not that good & has no real story, artistic value or social relevance beyond two people being tortured & eventually murdered.