Far from Perfect, Far from Terrible

I saw this movie before reading any reviews, and I thought it was very funny. I was very surprised to see the overwhelmingly negative reviews this film received from critics.

The movie's not perfect, but it sticks the landing of its message. It was engaging - thrilling at times - and I personally thought it was a great time.

Unshakable, witty and deeply felt, the film will be paying emotional dividends for a long, long time.

This movie... if you can call it that, is from some no name director trying to be edgy. It's disgusting and makes no sense at the same time. This director maybe the next Jeffrey Dahmer or John Wayne Gacy btw

I watched this movie only because many websites say its the most disturbing movie...!! i don't think so..... at first movie is really hard to understand because its black and white representation also no dialogue or kind of subtitles.the movie is about the god , mother earth , and a flesh on bone. you can get a little idea of movie when it actually end and cast name appear on screen for me its not even disturbing or sick but not even good movie to watch. if i have to choose between 'A serbian film' or begotten i will always choose 'serbian film'.

As a longtime lover of surrealist and experimental cinema, "Begotten" has remained on my radar for a while now. I've heard many varying perspectives on this polarizing film, and I did not finally decide to watch it until today, and all I can say is: .This is not a normal film by any means. Instead, it's really a piece of visual art, and I don't say this to sound like a hipster who's intellectually far more superior than the fools who surround me, I say it because that's really what it is. Technically, it is definitely a movie, but its classification cannot end there. It's too unconventional to not be given some sort of heavy artistic label. Of course, just because something is heavily "artistic" does not mean that it's good by any means, and maybe this isn't really good, but I definitely enjoyed it overall.There's definitely quite a lot of bad things about this film. First of all, some sections are way too slow and this painstaking slowness made me blackout several times while I as watching it, allowing my mind to wander freely and think about totally unrelated things. However, the sections in which it does hold your attention are really quite spectacular and rank with the likes of great surrealist films like "L'age d'Or" and, my all time favorite movie, "Eraserhead". However, it misses some of the key elements those films had that made them so entertaining-for example: humor! I feel as if humor is an essential part of surrealist cinema. Sure, some surreal films do perfectly fine without it, but those are few and far between (I mean, "Antichrist" is objectively a perfectly crafted film and there is literally no reason to alter it in my opinion). Nearly everything David Lynch has ever worked on has at least a few laugh out loud moments, and Bunuel was once notorious for his hilarious mockeries of religion, the bourgeois, and society in general. Although I must admit that I can't really find a spot in "Begotten" in which humor would be appropriate...Other problems that I had with the film dealt with its rather pretentious use of religious imagery. I get that the entire film is about the death and rebirth of gods, but you can tell this story without the common religious symbols that are used in tons of other avant garde art pieces! It's stale territory and can only be properly pulled off by a genuinely masterful filmmaker. And while the man behind this work certainly has the potential to be such, he has yet to fully prove said potential. I may sound like I'm picking on this film quite a bit, so I'll lay out some of the reasons I gave this oddity such a high rating: -the visuals are pretty damn beautiful despite their gritty feel, and whenever they aren't beautiful it's due to some of the film's intentionally disturbing imagery -in terms of a horror film, "Begotten" may be unusual but it's still extremely effective, filled with the creepiest visuals imaginable and an atmosphere so dark and strange that it almost flawlessly replicates the weirdest of my nightmares. -it's a successfully otherworldly experience, and that's one of the best and most important things I think that film can do -the scenes that are intriguing are almost endlessly watchable and have gained an impressively iconic status among horror fans in the modern day.Thanks to these several key qualities I can enthusiastically recommend "Begotten" to bug fans of artistic, surreal, scary, and disturbing cinema. I cannot guarantee that you will enjoy it, but it's worth watching at least once as a unique and unsettling curio and a mild modern classic of the avant garde.

Remember that scene from the Japanese 'Ring' when we see the cursed video footage for the first time and it's a disturbing, grainy, black and white montage of writhing bodies, ominous hooded figures standing beside the sea, and the well in the middle of the desolate forest? Well 'Begotten' is a lot like that except that it's arguably more disturbing as well as considerably longer.'Begotten' is clearly not for the masses. From the get-go the imagery is gruesome: in the opening scene we see a figure disembowelling himself with a razor, the corpse of which is molested by a female figure who impregnates herself and gives birth to a fully grown man who convulses in seemingly perpetual agony before both of them consequently suffer at the hands of different categories of ambiguous, sadistic ghouls. At the end of the film a cast of 'characters' informs us that those at the beginning were God killing Himself, Mother Earth, and Son Of Earth - Flesh On Bone…if that helps.In addition to this challenging content, another point of contention is the grainy, 'Erasrerhead'-esque black-and-white cinematography which makes the images at times so distorted that it's difficult to discern any clear outlines, which can be frustrating when you're trying to not miss anything in an attempt to fathom the impenetrable narrative! However, in endeavouring to appreciate the bold artistic ambitions of the film I forgave all of this...but the one thing which really irked me was the fact is that it is basically too long. The film clocks in at over 70 minutes and yet I genuinely think I would have appreciated it to the same level if it were half of this.Having said that, the film clearly wasn't designed with any intention of crowd-pleasing, and unrepentantly is what it is: a unique and individual film which walks amongst the best (and most thought-provoking) experimental cinema has to offer. So while you could say "take it or leave it" I really think those that choose the latter are missing something exceptional.