Charlotte's Net

The Twitter account holder for Charlotte’s Net was asked by a would-be partaker in this sub-human enterprise “All the gore real yea?”, to which the account holder replied “100% real”. And what gore would that be? According to IMDb user @kannibalcorpsegrinder it includes “gang beatdowns, live mutilations and dismemberments, executions, and accidents that reveal brutal and obscene acts”. Unfortunately for myself I glimpsed the gang beatdown as well as an act of bestiality to add to the list.

I’m hazy on which version I watched, or skim-watched as is undoubtedly the healthiest way to approach such seedy material. 5 minutes in to mine there was a break that labelled it the censored ‘VHS style edition’, and that an ‘Uncut & Uncensored Edition’ could be viewed only by purchasing it on the dark web. Presumably because—as the previous shady, disturbingly zealous Twitter exchange suggests—there is a version of this that features real acts of violent criminality. Having done some research however, it appears even the “censored” version of the film contains an act of genuine animal cruelty. Needless to say I wasn’t sticking around to find out. The idea of packaging together found footage barbarism and selling it as a product is depraved in the extreme. Its tagline “don’t go deep into that dark” hints at a self-aware statement that individuals addicted to extreme internet content ought to go outside and get some sunshine, but the putridity of the attitude displayed in the film’s ostensibly cinematic sections suggests it’s really the filmmakers who need to go out and get some sunshine.

Ideally the best means of addressing this snuff-exploitation drivel would be to ignore it (all comment is advertising), but seeing as that isn’t an option here, it ought to be buried without passion or fuss, and quietly forgotten about by those comparitively clean-minded citizens who don’t pervertedly fetishize violence. Roger Ebert once refused to award The Human Centipede a star rating on the basis that it occupied a world where the stars don’t shine. I think I understand how he felt now.