[sral]

Cutting Moments

This one here's a short film actually but is still thrown up in a LOT of most sickening/disturbing lists - and rightly so! It uses it's short running time to great effect, cutting out a lot of 'character development', but this isn't really the type of movie where that's needed. It opens with what's clearly a dysfunctional family, there's child abuse and clearly a huge rift between the mother and the father - due to the father having zero interest in his wife now. She is desperate to make him want her again, and in one particularly graphic and longing scene she scrubs her face with a Brillo pad until she removes the bottom half of her face, leaving the bathroom sink drenched in her blood. Following this she re-enters the family living room where her husband is watching TV, in an attempt to seduce him with her bloodied red raw jaw covered in blood. She succeeds and eventually as the two of them fuck in the missionary position, the husband reaches for a pair of handy garden shears... then proceeds to chop of his own penis with an almighty chop that had me feeling to check Lars Jnr was still intact. The end.

It may not sound too brutal, (how bad could a short film possibly be, right?) but this film certainly does a lot with what it has. The special effects are brilliantly done and nothing looks cheap, the 'look' of the short is very realistic - especially the two scenes in particular I mentioned - and even though there's little to no real character development, that doesn't really detract from this short film at all, you still feel for those involved and it's graphic content is very well executed. This one doesn't rate so highly on my own personal list purely because it's only a short film and not an actual feature length movie, which is what I was looking at when I started this whole shindig, but for what it's worth this shouldn't be ignored by those interested in this sort of thing, the effects are very well done and impressive looking enough to make you wince. I should maybe do a separate list of short films etc with their own rankings as it doesn't seem fair almost to have this compared to features 3/4 times it's length but I really enjoyed this one, even if it's not for the faint of heart!