Warning: This article contains graphic descriptions from the film Kuso.There are a select variety of films that attempt to utilize shock value as a means to tell a story. Sometimes, shock value overshadows a story and audiences are meant to witness brutal imagery and take that as a one note experience, whetherhorroror not. However,Kusois a film that is both shocking and complex.Directed by musicianand artist Steven Ellison (also known as Flying Lotus), we certainly see an eye for aesthetics… fairly gross aesthetics. The film is unforgettable, and according to a review fromThe Verge, it has been labeled as the grossest movie ever made.
The plot of this film is scattered across multiple storylines told in vignette form. Audiences have seen this format most recently in theNetflix series,Love Death and Robots. After a terrible earthquake, mutilated civilians are meant to endure the new world. These characters are exposed to the raw and sometimes fantastical elements that plague a world shattered by adversity. But this is a fairly deep dive after plunging through the disgusting imagery depicted in this film. To contextualize a film likeKusowould be like trying to understand a painting that was done by taking one’s hands, dumping them into buckets of paint and smearing the mixture onto a wall.
The Pure Emotion Behind the Grotesque Kuso
There is raw emotion in art like the aforementioned, just as there is in each vignette ofKuso,and there is an emotional throughline here. Unfortunately, any thematic elements are buried under brutally horrific imagery that is by no means safe for work. The story is divided into four segments that loosely connect. Each tells a story about an individual overcoming adversity or fear, but is overshadowed by visceral and disturbing sequences that leave the viewer nauseous.
There isn’t a rationale around the things that happen inKuso, which makes the experience all the more confusing. However, seeing a boy use excrement and (for lack of a better term) smear it all along a life form growing in a hole in the woods was quite unforgettable. From a filmmaking standpoint, however, there were great uses of practical effects to make the viewer’s stomach turn.
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Head turning sequences also include a woman smashing her teeth into concrete, the swapping of tongues in close-up with booming, sticky sound effects, and a man communicating with a doctor through his “dark side of the moon” to cure him of his fear of breasts. Let’s also not forget the unwatchable sequence where a woman reveals a talking boil growing out of her neck, and what ensues with her boyfriend involving the boil a few moments later is surely not appropriate for discussion. So this begs the question… why?
The Art of Excrement in Kuso
‘Kuso’ has a variety of meanings in Japanese translation, one including a more common and profane version of ‘feces;’ the title of the film, essentially, isSh*t. However, vile or juvenile a title as this might be, it also mirrors the audience’s identification with some of the character’s experience. While watching this movie’s anthological version of whatRick and Mortywould call “interdimensional cable,” the characters in one scene are exposed to brutal acts of violence on male genitalia. One character makes a statement that represents the entire film:
“This is art. This is sht. Art is sht.”
Just as these characters are flickering through the channels containing gross imagery, the audience is seeing a variety of disgusting sequences that are separated by a flickering static which symbolizes aRobot Chicken-kind of transition from one scene to another. Art is certainly subjective, but even when someone smears paint aimlessly along a wall, there is emotion and perhaps even intellect behind it. While the end result might look hideous and grotesque, the feeling going in and out of it is what makes art unique to the individual. Some people might see nothing in the abstract splotches of Pollock or Kandinsky, while others might see the meaning of life.
Going back to the sequence with the living boil, which is voiced by David Firth, there is a deep conversation that ensues about life itself. In a strange way, the boil understands its existence is meaningless, as it is attached to a host that despises it. There is a moment of true understanding and empathy towards a disgusting boil, but the film immediately goes into the realm of absurdity and in that same sequence shows the most gruesome act of intimacy in the entire runtime. It is almost as if the film wants the audience to focus on the absurdities and the gruesomeness of life. In the end, it is what sticks with the viewer the most.
Kuso May Not Be Horror, But It’s Horrific
In terms of the visuals and practical effects, they are up to par and quite realistic. Each gross and disturbing image is shown in full detail and sometimes in quite close angles, every bodily liquid and grotesque protrusion seeming lifelike. There are also cartoonish interludes that are reminiscent of psychedelic visions or a wild imagination, like a mushroom trip gone entirely wrong. A film likeKusois certainly meant to be disgusting.
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Contrasting this experience to a film which once provoked mass disgust likethe horror movieThe Exorcist,which has breaks from the disturbing scenes and even moments of levity,Kusohas none. There are no times when the audience can have a breath and take in what they saw, because there is even more blood, guts, feces, and other oddities just thrown onto the screen a few seconds later. As there is no break from the grotesque, there is a credible argument for this film being the most disgusting of all time.
There have certainly been other disgusting films, from what many consider to be the trash ofA Serbian Filmto the disturbing awfulness of Category III films in Hong Kong. ButKusofinds disgust and sickening awfulness in even the banal moments of existence; it doesn’t depend on the shock-jock histrionics of exploitative trash that uses sexual assault, cannibalism, or any other terrible thing to disgust audiences. No,Kusocreates disgust by recognizing human biology and our physical society itself as disgusting organisms. As audience members whowalked out during Sundance screeningswould probably agree, this film is unforgettable and at times… unwatchable.
