Featured Image Credit: Unearthed Films
Topics: Film and TV, Horror
Joe Yates
Warning: This article discusses themes that may upset some readers.
When it comes to horror, there are films that make you squirm, and then there are films so disturbing they end up banned in more than 40 countries.
That movie is A Serbian Film, a 2010 release that has gone down as one of the most controversial movies of all time.
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Billed as a horror-thriller, it follows Milos, a retired adult star who agrees to one final payday without realising he’s walked straight into a snuff movie.
What unfolds is a spiral of sexual violence, murder, and depravity that’s so extreme it’s hard to even describe, and outrage began as soon as it started screening.
In South Australia, the film was pulled the day before it was due to play at Melbourne’s Underground Film Festival.
Attorney-General of the region at the time, John Rau, explained why the state refused classification: "It was grotesque at a number of levels.
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"Exploitative sexual violence, offensive depictions of interactions between children and adults, exploitative behaviour generally of a nature that is so unusual that I can't imagine how any right-thinking person could think that this was something that should be appropriately, legally obtained in South Australia.”
Despite that, the festival director Richard Wolstencroft pushed ahead with a version approved at the national level. He told reporters: "I’m against the banning of any film, as long as no one’s actually been hurt.
"Even as it made me question it, this film is not illegal and as far as I can tell no one was hurt in the making of it; it was made legally, so I can’t see why the film shouldn’t be played.”
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The pushback wasn’t just in Australia - countries around the world lined up to block it, with places like Spain, Malaysia and Brazil flat-out banning the flick.
Even in the US and UK, it couldn’t be released without significant cuts - one minute trimmed for America, and nearly four minutes hacked out across 11 separate scenes in Britain.
Things escalated even further in Spain when film festival director Ángel Sala was arrested in 2011 after complaints from a Catholic group.
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He was charged with 'exhibiting child pornography' for screening A Serbian Film, and faced up to a year in prison before charges were eventually dropped.
However, the movie’s director, Srđan Spasojević, insists the work is more than just shock value.
Speaking to IndieWire, he explained: "We just wanted to express our deepest and honest feelings towards our region and also the world in general - a world that is sugar-coated in political correctness, but also very rotten under that façade.”
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Some critics have defended it as a brutal political metaphor for Serbia’s history, while others dismissed it outright.
If you’re still thinking of watching this, then the top review on IMDb is sure to either put you off or fully confirm that mindset.
It reads: “I heard about this movie on YouTube, it was someone saying don't watch it it's made to disturb you but I didn't listen and I feel like vomiting now please do not watch this just don't I'm literally crying right now.”
Maybe that’s warning enough.