When the surrealist art came it shocked people. Salvador Dali is one of the most controversial painters ever thanks to this. But, nevertheless, its beautiful, its art. This film, which pretentiously tries to be Surrealist, or Dadaist, don't get it and is absolutely condemnable in its basic intention: to shock people because, period. Directed and written by Karim Hussain, has some actors too, but who cares?The film is divided into four parts, each one more sickening than the other, in a reflection of the twisted mind of its director, who seems to have the sensitivity of a rock and the mental health of a Roman emperor. The film mixes, without apparent reason or sense, extremely graphic violence, explicit blood, sex, profanity, religious symbology being desecrated, killings and other things like that. The only explicit and latent purpose throughout the film is the shock, the clear and stated intention to intimidate the public and revolting people. And when this is done without any explicit positive intention behind, its always bad, is doing the opposite of what cinema should be: Art that tells you a story. Yes, cinema may shock and go against what people consider normal. But it should serve to change them, to improve them, to change mentalities for good. Offending people shouldn't be an end in itself, or in the movies or in anything else. The Seventh Art didn't need that.This movie has repeatedly censored and banned in several countries. A measure that many persons will find punitive and dictatorial, but that is, in this case, very reasonable. This film will serve as a beacon of bad example for ever.

I watched this during the day but I must give it another go in the early hours of the morning to see how freaky it might be. As others have said, the first segment has a naked woman with her abdomen cut open (actually a darn good effect without any noticeable CGI) and an eyeball fished out to signify... I haven't a clue lol. Before this happens some words flash up about the functionality of the brain etc. The movie plays like some nightmare you may have, and doesn't make a lot of sense, but I'm all for originality, I found it very interesting, but I don't shock much at all with things that are fabricated, so it could be a bit disturbing for some.The second scene has a guy who's impregnated his sister planning to kill the unborn baby. He plays with the sperm on his hands as he masturbates later watching her lying in her room. I must say, there is some wonderful music in this section, a lot of it reminiscent of the old Italian horror flicks I've seen. And some of the imagery is quite beautiful, the dialogue also makes some (very dark) sense. The entire act is driven by the incest which took place, and the pregnancy afterwards. There was something very enthralling about it all. Eventually the brother brews a hatred for his sister after experiencing her bleeding. There's certainly some very mature film- making here and Hollywood could never, ever, make something like this. The birth scene is intercut with that of a caught fish and her brother murders the baby as it emerges pulling it out and dripping it's blood in his sister's face. The brother rejoices at his killing a baby "during the process of creation" although given that a baby is created long before this, that point is a little lost. He then puts the dead baby on a shelf and his sister dies. Some mention of necrophilia then is inferred. I didn't really find any of it shocking. I'm not sure why. It certainly held my attention, but I can see why many would be freaked by this second part. Luckily, not many will ever witness this movie however so not too much to worry about. Act three has some nude folk seemingly making love to a field (yeah really). The field bleeds too when it's pulled open. Nope, I dunno what that was about. The life within nature maybe? Nothing wrong with a bit of environmentalism, but I'll draw the line at earth sex lol. Some twigs even bleed when broken, while the people lick it up. Maybe it's saying we are vampires sucking the life blood from the planet? Is that what it meant? Duh, I dunno.Next part opens with a hardcore sex scene (real and in close up) on a screen. Some guy sits masturbating to it. He orgasms, then goes to bed. Here he dreams that his penis is getting pulled apart by fish hooks and blood is flying out with reams of religious imagery and a cross melted down for drugs and injected in his head (yeah I got that bit, religion sure is some people's opium). There's then some jebus like character getting licked and bitten/ cut by naked women (if you believe in this myth you might be insulted) finishing with him getting his entrails ripped out and a naked woman rubbing herself with them. Again, I'm an atheist so water off a ducks back to me. He then seems to come back (like in the other tale) and gets a big stick shoved up his bloody bum. Yeah, I guess they were trying to shock here lol. Finally the original guy appears bathing in a river which might indicate some kind of rebirth, but the movie finishes with him lying (dead?) in bed with two faces and fangs demonstrating the first concept of the movie about the right and left hemispheres of the brain and their function. Phew, and that's it.Was it pretentious? Just a little. But it had some fine gore so I might forgive it. Art-Horror, whatever next?

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.

I finally got hold of the excellent Sazuma DVD of this film which is loaded with interesting extras. I have read quite a lot about it, and I unfortunately missed it at the Stockholm Film Festival. It doesn't quite deliver as I thought it would but it is still worth watching if you like strange and unique movies. I much rather watch this again than any of the recent so-called horror films vomited out of Hollywood these days. What detracts from the experience for me, is certain music cues which sound dated and rely too much on cheap synth sounds. For me, all these tonal/harmonic elements of the score could have been lifted out, and replaced by David Kristians excellent sound design. But that is just my opinion. Otherwise this is a daring, angry picture with welcome meditative and poetic parts, like the fading of the photograph sequence which is beautiful. I look forward to seeing Ascension, and I applaud Mitch and Karim for their efforts in producing non-mainstream cinema. They are a great inspiration as I soon embark on my own short film production.