Karmadonna

I was about thirteen when I heard of A Serbian Film . I was on terrible message boards at way too young of an age and someone recommended it to me when I asked for really scary movies. I watched it and was mostly bored with occasionally being grossed out at parts. After fifteen years of its release, one of the writers, Aleksander Radivojević, behind it gets his own feature film, that being Karmadonna .

I’m not sure how to even describe the plot of this film, but I’ll try. The pregnant Jelena (Jelena Dokić) receives threatening phone calls from a supernatural force that tells her to commit violence. While this is going on, a young man is held in a compound and being exploited by some people.

The concept is interesting, exploring the fears of pregnancy that a woman might go through. But this thing is just a boring mess. It’s so unfocused and can’t seem to stick with one plot. It immediately jumps in with the supernatural phone, so there is no build up or character we get from Jelena. She starts committing violence, but again there is no build up since she starts almost right away with murder. The film feels so stagnant when it comes to the shocking imagery that it’s almost sleep worthy.

As for the main marketing for this film being that it was directed by one of the writers of A Serbian Film , this thing is surprisingly tame. Yes there is murder and swearing and a lot of the nastiness that A Serbian Film had, but the content pails in comparison to the former. There is a scene where someone puts another character’s balls in a blender and drinks them, but I think that’s the height of the shocking content. The practical effects and CGI used doesn’t even look that good. There’s a shot where this little boy gets red eyes at the beginning of the film that looks so bad I laughed out loud. I will admit that there is a practical effect that involves an eyeball and a shot glass that does look pretty good, but that’s it.

Dokić did a good job with the poor script she was given. Her comedic line deliveries did get a genuine chuckle from me. The cinematography isn’t terrible either. These are really the only positives I could think of the film.

This whole thing just feels like a thirteen year old boy going “See? Isn’t this fucked up? I’m so disturbed and dark and evil.” For the great return of Radivojević after being gone from the industry for fifteen years, this one is a massive disappointment.