Is there any nihilism worse than french nihilism?

"It's like Transformers 2 for people who like fucked up movies."
-Sinclair

That statement is strangely accurate. Irreversible is the kind of movie that will haunt your gut. Fermenting worry about the nature of humanity. I had gotten it from Netflix a month or so ago, and only just gathered the courage to watch it. Even though I recently saw Oldboy and Mulholland Drive -- two films that have their fair share of weird misanthropy in its Korean and Lynchean forms, respectively -- I resisted. And rightly so. Spoilers and abhorrence ho!

It was all I could do not to turn this off after the first 10 minutes. It starts with an act of horrifically violent vengeance, with a loopy spinning camera and sounds meant to cause nausea. As if the guy getting his head bashed in with a fire extinguisher in the felching club wasn't enough. The narrative progresses backwards -- ie each seen precedes the one before it, in the timeline. Fortunately the loopy camera stops, for the most part. But just when you think that first scene was the pinnacle of depravity possible thing ever filmed, there's 9 minutes of Monica Belluci getting raped, all in a single take. Be glad I didn't post the poster of that up top.

After that everything seems tame, even the assault of a tranny hooker. Yet, I can't say this movie was not worth watching. It has something to say about the nature of violence and vengeance -- pointless. Like the old naked dude says at the beginning, "Time destroys all." Depressing, yes. But untrue? It's no stretch to say this has more in common with Funny Games than Clockwork Orange.

The filmmaker manipulates the audience to feel the worst of all things. View it at the risk of your mental health and faith in humanity. The only way I can imagine the experience being worse is if you watched it while recovering from a cocaine hangover. I'm going to try and put it out of my mind as quickly as possible through repeated viewings of Ratatouille and, uh, Speed Racer.