Begotten is a movie, maybe.
Begotten is a 1990 black-and-white horror film with a runtime of just 72 minutes that I could not find in a quality higher than 240p. The film was published straight to DVD in 2001, a whole 11 years after its creation, and film critics wrote love letters for its originality and defiance of viewer expectations.
The film’s originality cannot be denied, though I see a strong visual inspiration from David Lynch’s Eraserhead (1977) and a conceptual precedent for films like mother! (2017). It has been described as “something you would see on the deep web,” and one of the few things critics can agree on is that it retells—and reimagines—the biblical story of Genesis. So, with sketchy online access and a hungry horror stomach, I hit play.
The movie, as many have said, is truly an experience one needs to have on their own, and who am I to take that from you? So, I’ll be brief. The movie opens up with “God Killing Himself” who is in the act of, well, killing himself. His prolonged death eventually births “Mother Earth,” who, after a deeply disturbing sexual scene, gives birth to “Son of Earth – Flesh on Bone.”
If you’re watching this movie, I hope you enjoy the way this character looks, because you’re about to watch this deformed, blistered man twitch and convulse for the majority of the film as insane, violent, horrific rituals take place around him.
These rites, as well as everything in the movie, are incredibly difficult to see since the whole movie is in low-resolution, high-contrast shots with exposure cranked up to 11. If that wasn’t enough, Director E. Elias Merhige ran the unshot film through sandpaper to scratch it to all hell before shooting the scenes. For this reason, the viewer has to pay ridiculously close attention just to understand what’s going on in the movie, in both a visual and conceptual sense.
When you can see what’s going on, though, you are in for a bumpy ride. The vibe this movie brings is nothing short of hardcore—so disturbing, in fact, that with all the violence and bewitched sexuality here, watching it makes you legitimately wonder whether someone died in the making.
On the other hand, the fact that it’s difficult for me to even imagine what the shooting process was like probably speaks to how immersive it is.
The movie is edited more like a Marilyn Manson music video than a film, and, with its dialogue-less ambience of crickets, rain and rustling grass, the experience becomes weirdly mesmerizing the longer it goes on.
But how long can it really go on? Being a film masochist, I’m all for unsettling images and deliberately discomforting the viewer, which is why I picked up Begotten in the first place. But, after a while, the viewer just checks out. You can only watch a body be mutilated so many times in so many ways, and eventually the shock wears off, leaving the viewer in more of a deep trance state. This is a strong emotional effect, sure, but it also makes it nearly impossible to glean anything from the experience when you’ve been rendered half-braindead.
I adore the vibe Begotten brings and the concept it shoots for, and I’ll probably love the movie just for that. But, objectively, there are so many better ways to do it—and so many films that do it better.
The experience is an unforgettable one, but the only way I can recommend this movie is if you’re looking for just that—an experience. Not a movie, not an artwork, just a trip.
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