Grotesque

WARNING: EXTREME GRAPHIC CONTENT

Grotesque is a notorious Japanese splatter/torture porn film, made in 2009, written and directed by Koji Shiraishi.

Due to its extreme content, it's banned in several countries, including the United Kingdom.

BBFC (The British Board of Film Classification) director David Cook explained:
 "Unlike other recent 'torture' themed horror works, such as the Saw and Hostel series, Grotesque features minimal narrative or character development and presents the audience with little more than an unrelenting and escalating scenario of humiliation, brutality and sadism. In spite of a vestigial attempt to 'explain' the killer's motivations at the very end of the film, the chief pleasure on offer is not related to understanding the motivations of any of the central characters. Rather, the chief pleasure on offer seems to be wallowing in the spectacle of sadism (including sexual sadism) for its own sake."

The reception in Japan was initially less controversial, but after the notoriety of the UK ban, Amazon Japan decided to remove the DVD of Grotesque from its website.(Wiki)
 
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Plot Summary:

An unnamed doctor has always had everything he's ever wanted, but that has only made him develop more extreme and depraved needs. He kidnaps a young couple in the prime of their life together and forces them into a game of torment that slowly extinguishes their hopes for survival. (IMDb)
  

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"The version I watched had only Japanese and German language options but one doesn't really need to understand the dialog to figure out whats going on here. This movie really never does let up, it was horrendously oppressing from start to finish...The gore is strong stuff here folks, and not for the faint of heart...I know a few people who would suffer PTSD after watching this flick."(Cinema Head Cheese)  


Click to Watch:

Grotesque (The Trailer and the Full Movie)


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SPOILER:

WARNING: Just reading this will likely to make you feel like puking (no exaggeration).

A young couple Aki and Kazuo are snatched off the street while having their first date as a romantic couple after a few years working in the same office, and wake up shackled in a basement, which has all its walls covered with plastic. With no further explanation, a sadistic madman degrades, tortures and mutilates them.

Initially, he punctures Kazuo's belly with a screwdriver and slices his tongue, then rapes both, one at a time, forcing the other to watch.

Sometimes he stops the torture to provide medical assistance and cure the couple's wounds, so they can continue alive for a long period of time. This way he cuts off all their fingers, makes collars with them, pops out Kazuo's right eye, removes the girl's nipples and cuts off her right arm.

As the torture progresses, it is revealed he is simply doing it for sexual stimulation, and tells the couple he wants the two to survive.

At first, he has sex with the empty eye-socket after digging out Kazuo's eye, and ejaculates into his socket. He continues, however, through gruesome stomping of the eyeballs and forced cannibalism. He finally castrates Kazuo, claiming he has found all the sexual relief he needs, so no longer needs the couple's "services".

Then the couple is moved to a room which resembles a modern and clean hospital room, where the kidnapper takes care of the couple's wounds. While it is never explicitly mentioned on the movie, it becomes gradually apparent that the man has professional medical training, refined manners, taste for classical music and good wines and dressed with expensive clothes when he is not in surgeon dress torturing the couple. At some point he even mentions he is a wealthy man, which suggests he may be a reputable surgeon, not merely a violent sadist, looking for an extreme and different way to obtain satisfaction on his lonely life; however, the couple also notes the doctor has a particular rotting smell always present behind his clean and elegant appearance.

After several days healing, the "doctor" simply tells the couple they will be free to go, he will turn himself to authorities and, as apology for all the suffering he inflicted to the couple, he will give them all his fortune which seems to be very large, as compensation.

After all the horror, in a moment alone in the hospital room, Aki and Kazuo promises to support each other once they leave the place and become a formal couple. It is unclear if the madman changed his mind, or if playing with the couple's hopes to survive and being released soon was part of his mischievous plan from the beginning, but immediately after communicating to them they will be released, the next scene takes back the couple to the scary basement.

After being drugged, they are shackled again, exactly as they were the first time. The "doctor" announces they must participate in one final test of love strength. He pulls out an extreme of Kazuo's intestines and attaches them to a hook. If Kazuo is able to cross the room to the other side (pulling off his entire intestines out of his body in the process), take a scissors and cut Aki's ropes to release her, both will be finally free. However, Kazuo fails due to blood loss and falls to the ground in agony (it is also revealed that the ropes restraining Aki have a metal wire running through them, rendering them impossible to cut with scissors; the task was therefore impossible).

Aki begins to insult the doctor, telling him he is just the son of a whore that nobody cares about, and insists despite his refined manners and expensive clothes, he has an unusual and unbearable skunk odor, no matter how hard the tries to cover the stench. Angered, the doctor cuts off Aki's head in response and as her head falls down, it lands on the man's neck and bites him with her final breath. Kazuo on the floor, not dead yet, stabs him in the foot with the scissors as a supreme last action. The couple then dies facing each other.

In the epilogue of the film, the madman is revealed to have survived what happened to him in the basement, although he cannot walk properly. He is in a quiet forest where he respectfully buries the couple next to each other in a traditional Japanese way, leaving the scissors on their tombs as a symbol. The next scene shows him back in the same car he used to kidnap the couple, covering himself with lots of perfume to hide his skunk stench while a girl is walking by, and the screen cuts to black as he goes after his next victim and the screen films the doctor licking his lips... (Wiki)


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Reviews:

"Grotesque does not deserve to be banned; it is a repulsive piece of horror but it also inspires an emotional attachment and provokes thought about the inner workings of a human mind subjected to a nature and nurture different from the norm. " (Horror Extreme)

“Grotesque” not only lives up to its title, but also to its billing as ‘the cruellest Japanese splatter movie ever’... Koji is a highly talented director who makes good use of his limited resources...〔he〕is easily one of the most interesting directors working in Japanese horror today. (Beyond Hollywood)

"'the spectacle of sadism' that so bothers the BBFC seems to be, at least in part, a cinematic metaphor for the twists and turns of a couple's journey from bodily lust to enduring love."(Little White Lies)

 "Grotesque doesn't pretend to be something it isn't. There's not much of a story, no real plot to speak of and some of the material is plain old disgusting and offensive but it never once demands you consider this a serious filmmaking endeavor. There's no hidden meaning, no heroes, no retribution, no one single ounce of socially redeeming value and it wallows in it!" (Yahoo Movie Review)


"There is some pontificating about evil and society and love but 'Grotesque' is essentially one long torture set piece...It’s hard to tell whether the filmmaker was in fact trying to say something or just push the boundaries of cinema." (Far East Films)
 
 
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Source:
Wikipedia (Japanese, English)
IMDb

If you like this kind of extreme movies, I recommend you also watch:
Martyrs 
Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom