by Cain Noble-Davies
Cast:
Guerrilla Metropolitana, Juicy X, Elektra McBride, Marie Antoinette de Robespierre
Intro:
… hour-long navel gaze stained with body fluids.
[content warning: sexual assault]
- Scrolling white text on black background describes how Elektra McBride, the wife of a televangelist, contacted director Guerrilla Metropolitana [GM] after his debut feature Dariuss to help fund his next production. Her only condition is that she appear – anonymously – via video link in the film itself.
- Juicy X reads from a script, reminiscent of a ransom video, describing her experiences as a support worker, and working with Metropolitana on his short film Corporate Torment (It Burns Like Hell), up to and including where a certain camera was inserted.
- An hour of Juicy X and Guerrilla Metropolitana physically and sexually abusing, and eventually murdering, a woman identified only as ‘Pinkie Pet’.
This, in the plainest terms, is the content of The Benefactress. For just under an hour, excluding credits and what could be argued is a post-credits scene, this is it.
It takes the ‘SA as content’ mode of underground horror found in the works of Ron Atkins (Schizophreniac: The Whore Mangler) and Bill Zebub (Loving A Vegetable) and stretches it out into an excruciating endurance test. There’s such an intensely, excruciatingly tangible feeling to Guerrilla Metropolitana’s film – including the softcore pornography nudity – that it feels like no showers are hot enough to serve as adequate aftercare.
Naturally, as is frequently the case with such highfalutin edgelords, there’s ostensibly a ‘point’ to this piece of digital media masquerading as a snuff film. Prefaced with “Do what you love” and “How far can a filmmaker’s artistic freedom go?”, the in-universe framing to do with Elektra McBride and Metropolitana draws queries about the ethics of filmmaking both as product that needs to be funded, and as art to be created. On the former, it metatextually remarks on the hypocrisy of those who call for censorship or derision of material they themselves get off on (as Elektra quite literally does herself on-screen), and on the latter, it pokes at the self-imposed sanctity of ‘the artist’s vision’ when it’s used towards these ends.
It’s like a more graphic (and sophomoric) version of I Blame Society in its deconstruction of the idea of the cinematic auteur, and shows just how gross auteurism is at its core. Behold, the great filmmaking artist, injecting his gentleman’s whistle with the same brand of methamphetamine (Pervitin) used by soldiers in Nazi Germany; bow before the creative class!
Essentially, this is a transgressive film that exists to point fingers at those who create, bankroll, and watch transgressive films, blurring the lines between audience and direct participant. But for all its gesturing (and despite how often it flashes phrases on-screen like “Hello audience!” and “Kill her? … Or more sex?”, gesturing is the most that it manages to do), its proclamations of anti-art sentiment and questioning whether such things should exist only go as far as the aesthetic level, rather than the monotony of its content.
Yes, it is nightmarishly to sit through, but the actual film craft isn’t much better. Cheap digital footage overlayed with dodgy artificial film grain, the aforementioned flashbang interstitial titles, bursts of black-and-white footage in a seeming attempt to make this feel even more like a bootleg of The Human Centipede II; art, even art that argues against its own existence, should look better than this.
GM’s debut Dariuss, which also featured copious amounts of rubbernecking sexual content, may have been a bit too laughable to be genuinely unsettling, with its echo-location-via-kitchen-sink sound design and multiple Tommy Pickles jumpscares (yes, seriously), but it stood out from just about any other film ever made in its singular strangeness and unorthodoxy. This latest effort just reflects trends that have been floating around in the underground over the past thirty years, like the worst kind of vibe check that exists solely to see if audiences have become desensitised to such brutality in their media diet. Compared to admittedly more mainstream anti-art works like Mad God’s treatise on artistic creation as its own form of cruelty, or The Cabin in the Woods’ sly jabs at contemporaneous ‘torture porn’ trends in horror, the only reaction after the initial shock and horror is an emphatic eyeroll.
The Benefactress (An Exposure Of Cinematic Freedom), by the director’s own admission, is not entertainment, and for reasons both intended and otherwise, we couldn’t agree more. While it shows a better handling of tone and intent than previous work, it seemingly wants to comment on the existence of films like this that are considered ‘art’ but ultimately just come across as an act of pure loathing both for itself and its audience. It seeks to disturb and unsettle, and on that basis, it succeeds with flying colours… but even those solely looking for something to feel bad about watching have other options than this hour-long navel gaze stained with body fluids. Framing a woman being assaulted for an hour straight with all this thematic and metatextual window dressing does not change what it is, and trying to give it a self-flagellating “I’m free to make films like this, but should I be?” edge doesn’t make it compelling or meaningful. Transgressive, even offensive material has its place, but it helps not to act like you’re above making it while in the process of making it.
Available to view on Bloodstreamtv
