Grotesque



AKA: Gurotesuku

A young couple on a casual stroll get assaulted and kidnapped by a depraved doctor with nothing better to do. He takes them back to his homemade dungeon, intent on mercilessly torturing the two of them. But he also implores them not to give up hope, and tells them that if they can withstand the horrific pain enough to excite him then he will let them go.



We’re back to my usual foreign films schedule again this week, and I know I usually lean a little heavy on the Japanese films, but I think I’ve got a nice little assortment of movies from different countries this month. Or at least I tried to. But since I do have a LOT of Japanese films on my list, I figured I’d start off with one of those and… Well…. Goodness, I should have picked another one (any one, really), cause films like this really are not my cup of tea. Because Grotesque is a Japanese exploitation horror film, one that often gets compared to similar films like the Saw and Hostel series. Except this film could in many ways be considered much worse than those films, as the only distinguishing feature it really has seems to be that it was banned in the UK, which seems to have gained it at least a small bit of notoriety due to it being… Well, in short, it’s little more than torture porn.



I’ll be honest, I don’t really care for movies like Hostel, but I kind of actually liked most of the Saw films. And the reason for that, I think, and the reason why I bounced off Grotesque as well, is that those films actually have plots. Yeah, most of the Saw films ended up repeating the same damn plots over and over again towards the end. But they still contained things like character development, and motives, and some sort of mystery and motivation to figure out the further along the story progressed. But this movie is little more than watching this one depraved guy torture these two strangers in a variety of sadistic ways, all while dangling the carrot of possible freedom in front of them. So you spend most of the movie watching them get stabbed, cut, chopped up and sexually assaulted (both of them, the dude may be evil, but he’s an equal opportunity sicko (though I’m aware that’s nothing to be proud of)). And because you’re not really given anything in the way of motive or backstory or little to no reasoning for what you’re seeing of any kind, you’re not given any breathing room regarding the content. Making the whole film little more than torture scene after torture scene. So it’s basically torture porn for the sake of torture porn. It’s kind of exhausting, really. The only saving grace is that it’s only 74 minutes long, so your torment is blissfully short, even though the lack of any kind of respite in regards to the torture can make the movie feel much longer than it actually is.



On the plus side though (there’s a plus side to all this?) the acting is great. The creepy doctor often comes across as disengaged from the horrors he’s inflicting, which makes his actions all the more disturbing. And his victims react…. Well, about how you’d expect from a pair who are being sexually and physically tortured by having pieces of their body parts cut off with chainsaws. They cry, they shake, they plead, and there is naturally a lot of screaming involved. But they also have moments where they try to steel themselves to the horror in order to try to survive, so you do feel compelled to root for them, even though you’re 99.999% sure that this dickhead is never going to fulfill his promise of letting them go.


Gambate, you poor souls.

Now the downsides (other than the copious amounts of the previously mentioned torture porn) are the ending and the sound. Now, the sound in particular really started to irk me a bit, because you could tell that much of it was exaggerated to add to the “effect”. So all the creepy squishy noises are very, very LOUD. But, like, too loud, often to the point of ridiculousness. And then other sounds that SHOULD be much louder, like dropping a finger (or two, or three) into a metal dish barely made any noise at all. So things like that were a little annoying.



And then the ending is just… I don’t know, really weird. Which is actually pretty common for Japanese horror movies (bless those oddballs). But in the case of this movie it felt especially out of place. Because the film takes itself dead-ass seriously for the entirety of the film, except for that one singular moment. And I’m just going to go ahead and spoil it (for those who care THIS IS YOUR WARNING), because I’m sure most people who hear “torture porn” aren’t going to care to watch this. But right at the very end, immediately after the gal metaphorically says “fuck it” and goes on a long, rambling rant insulting this douchbag, our torturer decapitates her, and her head goes flying comically into the air (insert slow-mo scene here) and then falls back down towards him and bites a big chunk out of his neck, in one last epic Fuck You to the killer.(END SPOILER) It just… doesn’t fit the rest of the film. And there is a more serious epilogue after that, but really after that it’s hard to take the movie seriously anymore.



In short, even by torture porn standards I think Grotesque is pretty meh. I mean, if all you want to watch is the torture porn then you’ll probably think it’s fine, because the effects are very well done. I will give it that one singular point in its favor. But if you’re hoping for a little more plot (or any plot, really) to go along with all of that, then you’re going to be very let down here. And if you’re not into torture porn…Well then you’ll want to stay as far away from this as possible.

Grotesque is available on a variety of streaming services, though you may have to search for it on your free service of choice.

Grotesque is also available on DVD and Bluray, but it appears to currently be out of print.

Helpful Links: