Re-watched this again last night and forgot how good it was - brutal and unrelenting from the start.............however my girlfriend also watched this for the first (and last!!) time.

Normally she is ok with my choices and generally trusts me and I can generally gauge what she will/won't watch but I really misjudged this one....

She was genuinely very distressed and upset after watching it and couldn't get to grips with a heavily pregnant woman under attack pretty much from the first 15 mins....the end was also very difficult for her to watch.

I tried to explain that this was the point as you had so much emotional investment in her plight compared to watching a load of teens who you hate being stalked and also it is difficult to do something new in horror......

All fell on deaf ears to some extent - don't get me wrong she isn't a prude/stupid etc and we have good and intelligent discussions about films and has enjoyed other mondo films but it makes me wonder if her reaction was due to her being a woman.....I don't mean this in a male chauvinistic way but simply it would be one of the worst things that could happen to woman?

She is also keen to watch Martyrs but now I'm not too sure now

Thoughts?

Just saw Inside last night - for the first time. It took ages to come out in Oz and even longer to get here on my Quickflix queue. What a spectacularly heavy film. There were a few point where I was almost ready to cut my losses and turn it off and I'm not vicar. So I don't know whether it was the fact that it was a pregnant woman in peril that makes the film so hard to take or just its unrelenting violence. It's also quite scary in parts, The Woman in the shadows etc.

Maybe steer clear of Martyrs.

Made me think again whether I actually want to see A Serbian Film. Any thoughts?

When I watched A Serbian Film I was pretty shocked but looking back it hasn't stayed with me really where other have - eg Martyrs or to a lesser extent The Killer Inside Me. Without wanted to turn this into another A Serbian Film debate I think more and more that it was a shock for shock sake and not a lasting haunting/disturbing film

The Killer Inside Me was absolutely horrific. Those scenes - the one in particular - has got to be up there with the most disturbing things I have ever scene. Watched that one with my partner. And we had no idea what we'd gotten in to.

For me, much of A Serbian Film now seems like an absurd comedy - almost a parody of an extreme horror movie. It's a well made film with an effective first half, but once the 'nasty' stuff kicks off it gets very silly very quickly (part of the reason I gave Ben that Serbian Christmas card last year!). I'd say Martyrs is a serious, harrowing piece of cinema - A Serbian Film is as much comedy as horror.

And does it sounds bad that I have a lot of fun with Inside? For me, it's much more a straight-up exploitation movie, a brilliantly-executed exercise in scares and gore. It's very gruelling in places, but I'd say the fact it's a pure horror movie - without the more transgressive/arthouse elements of Maryrs - that I don't find it nearly as disturbing as the latter.

That all said, I might have felt VERY differently about it if I'd watched it while Emma was pregnant!

No I really enjoyed Inside and tried to explain to her why I liked it based on the feelings it gave me I.e I really felt like I'd been though it watching it and that's what a good horror film should do- it really shouldn't be an easy watch and most importantly should leave its mark or there is no point......she agreed to some extent - (she referenced The Shining do I tried to make comparissons) but it just came back to you shouldn't do this to a pregnant woman!

I then tried the "this hasn't been done in horror before" angle......no joy there!

Oh well

From what I can remember, doesn't the preggers lass deal out a fair share or ass-kicking herself ? Not like she's a helpless victim getting tortured for 90 minutes. Yeah, I also saw this as a ghost-train thrill ride kind of film, not so much the straight-faced gruelling intensity of Martyrs . . .

Absolutely - she really fights back (accidentally killing her mum in the process!) As I think I said when we reviewed it years back having a pregnant woman as the main character was a stroke of genius - how could you not feel real terror for her?

Or find anyone more worthy to root for?!

Any a separate note has anyone watched Livid (2011).....

"Livid (French: Livide) is a 2011 French supernatural horror film directed and written by Julien Maury and Alexandre Bustillo. It is their follow-up to the horror film Inside. Also returning from Inside is actress Béatrice Dalle.[1]"

Also again from good old Wikipedia the duo are currently working on a section of an anthology film.....

"The two are also set to do a segment on Paris, I'll Kill You, a horror film anthology set in Paris, France."

"A new horror film is nabbing names left and right.  The film, Paris, I'll Kill You is a collection of short horror films, with a title that spoofs romantic film Paris, Je t'aime.  After the jump, check out the horror heavy-hitters who have signed on.
Paris, I'll Kill You has signed on Joe Dante (Gremlins), Paco Plaza ([REC]), Xavier Gens (Hitman), Vincenzo Natali (Splice), Ryuhei Kitamura (The Midnight Meat Train), Christopher Smith (Creep), French duo Julien Maury and Alexandre Bustillo, and German music video director Joern Heitmann will all direct segments of the feature.  The project is currently set up at Instinctive Films in GHermany, but will be shopping it around to an American market."

Also interestingly.....
"After the success of Inside, Maury and Bustillo were attached to at separate times to Halloween II, the sequel to Rob Zombie's remake of John Carpenter's Halloween as well as the remake for Clive Barker's Hellraiser. In both cases, they left the project. Says Maury, "We decided not to go to the United States to do a remake or a PG-13 movie; we want to do original things."

Yeah I bet all the new French Extreme horror directors get offered those Hollywood remake gigs - think I remember reading the Martyrs director was also attached to the Hellraiser remake for a while (sounds like a sweet pairing to me if a remake's gotta happen).

I'd forgotten about that horror version of Paris Je T'aime, posted about it on here some time last year. Should be good . . .

I'm with Dan on A Serbian Film - it's comedy, for me, I'd even go as far to say it's an outright comedy from beginning to end. The characters are incredibly over the top and the gross out scenes, whilst not from the Farrelly Brothers stable, they're not far off in that everything appears to be purposefully fake, unlike say Kill List which attempts realism to genuinely shock.

I showed Martyrs to my wife and it pretty much stopped her from watching any films that I choose now. She found it genuinely disturbing and had nightmares for a long time afterwards too! I guess she was mildly traumatised by it if you want to get medical.

Ever since though I've been trying hard to get her to watch Inside, but she'll never ever watch it unless I tape her to a chair with those eye-opening devices like Alex in A Clockwork Orange.
I think the whole mother/child bond is something that blokes will never really understand and without wanting to generalise, it's much more common I believe for a woman to be really swept up and emotionally involved in a film, certainly for me there's a little switch that flicks on when I watch anything remotely 'horror' and I just process the movie as fun (as much as possible) and 'not real', but that's just me.

My wife and I saw Enter The Void at the flicks in France and she was extremely upset ie. she was crying and gripping my arm like a vice during the rather graphic abortion scene - a scene that was powerful, but didn't bother me in any way at all.

As an addendum, the first film my wife and I ever watched together was Irreversible - so maybe the damage was done way back then?!

But actually she loved Drive -then again that stomping scene was so heavily cut that it's more about what you hear and I guess it's a tragic love story that appeals to her girlie sensibilities

INSIDE
i am there with Dan. this was so far over the top in terms of gore and mayhem that you cant really take it too seriously after a while. but it is a very effective little hardcore slasher movie.
LIVIDE is a different beast altogether. its much more a fantasy-gothic story with very little gore and some semi-poetic imagery. more atmosphere than thrills. i found it actually a little dull, but it was very late at night and i fell asleep once during the showdown so dont take my judgement as valid!
I watched MARTYRS with my pregnant wife (5th month) on a very big cinema screen with amped up sound system. i advised her not to go, but she insisted because the story intrigued her. she stayed until the second attack of the skinny girl, then mumbled ("i´ll be outside. have fun!"). To this day she relates signs of distress and anxiety from our son to her experience in that movie theater. MARTYRS packs a much heavier punch than any other french horror entry and its hard to see it just as a gore filled thrill ride, because it stays on the side of probability and deals with the reality of torture in an almost transcendental way. a must see, but for the initiated only.