- 3 weeks ago
Ever watched a film that felt like a personal attack? Join us as we break down movies that intentionally antagonize the viewer, using their narrative and style to critique Hollywood, media consumption, and our own complicity as an audience.
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00:00Almost all movies, by their design, are amenable to the idea that you took the time, money and effort to
00:06watch them.
00:07But evidently, there are peculiar exceptions to this rule.
00:10And that is absolutely the case with these films,
00:13each of which failed to veil their contempt for the fact that you actually bothered to see them at all.
00:18So with that in mind, I'm Ellie for WhatCulture, and here are the movies that hated you for watching.
00:24The Matrix Resurrections
00:25The Matrix Resurrections is a film that exists in spite of itself.
00:30Director Lana Wachowski made no qualms about voicing her disdain for the fact that Warner Bros. decided to dust off
00:37her long-dormant sci-fi IP,
00:40even straight up having characters vocalise the studio's desperation within the movie itself.
00:46Warner Bros. were going to make a new Matrix movie with or without the Wachowski's involvement.
00:51And so, Lana hatched an unhinged plan to make a scorched-earth sequel that's basically the furthest thing
00:57from what the bean counters, or indeed most fans, actually wanted.
01:02This sledgehammer-subtle meta-sequel feels like a quasi-parody of most legacy sequels,
01:08fully aware of its own redundancy and the creative bankruptcy which motivates its existence.
01:14Is it any good?
01:15Well, most fans seem to think not,
01:18many feeling that the film is more of a cinematic protest against Warner Bros.
01:22than an earnest attempt to make a fourth Matrix, which would be absolutely right.
01:27But audiences responded by rejecting the sequel outright, resulting in a massive box office flop,
01:33probably put a perverse smile on Wachowski's face.
01:36The Wolf of Wall Street
01:37The genius of Martin Scorsese's The Wolf of Wall Street is that it's at once a deliciously entertaining biopic
01:44of fraudster Jordan Belfort, and a searing indictment of our interest in this story.
01:50Scorsese has a history of depicting criminal life in a manner that's disconcertingly appealing to some,
01:56even while also condemning it.
01:59And The Wolf of Wall Street extends to more blatantly point its finger at the audience for being seduced by
02:05Belfort.
02:05This is best exemplified in the movie's final scene,
02:08where Belfort is released from prison and makes a living hosting seminars on sales techniques,
02:14where the doting audience is very clearly likened to us, the viewer,
02:18wrapped with fascination at this man and his admittedly magnetic powers of persuasion.
02:23That we can sit through three hours of this man's scumbaggery and still come away desiring the lifestyle,
02:30indicated by the uptick of interest in stockbroker jobs after the film's release,
02:35is a depressing indictment of human nature, and Scorsese knows it.
02:40Natural Born Killers
02:41Oliver Stone's Natural Born Killers was marketed as an edgier-than-edgy riff on the classic Bonnie and Clyde formula,
02:48luring bloodthirsty audiences in with the promise of a brutally violent crime yarn,
02:53only to force-feed them one of the most sensorily disorientating experiences ever committed to film.
02:58Stone goes out of his way to make every scene in the movie abhorrent to mainstream taste,
03:05edited with all the chaotic verse of a music video, intentionally garish,
03:10confrontingly vulgar, and frequently surreal.
03:13None of the violence here is entertaining, as Stone shoots it to be as unpleasant and unsexy as possible,
03:19focusing instead on human suffering through as ugly a lens as one can imagine.
03:24And even audiences eager to see protagonists Mickey and Mallory blown away at the end
03:29are spared that catharsis, given that it concludes with them getting away.
03:33Natural Born Killers is a film with a loud disdain for the media's glorification of violence,
03:38and our own complicity in it as viewers.
03:41Amping said violence up to almost unbearably nasty levels just to make its point.
03:47Blonde.
03:47To the casual movie fan scrolling through Netflix in late 2022,
03:52a Marilyn Monroe biopic starring Ana de Armas probably seemed like a must-watch.
03:56But anyone expecting a glossy, sexy, melodramatic encapsulation of Monroe's life and untimely death
04:03were firmly slapped around the face by director Andrew Dominic,
04:07who effectively made an anti-biopic which chides audiences for seeking entertainment
04:13in a troubled woman's deeply sad life story.
04:16Largely eschewing the glitz and glamour of Monroe's Hollywood career,
04:20Blonde is instead an extremely dark and upsetting character study,
04:24which actively attacks the very idea that audiences knew anything about Monroe,
04:29the human being, at all.
04:31It is a film filled with imagery intended to turn off all but the most ardent cinephiles,
04:36especially a controversial sequence in which Monroe talks to her unborn CGI fetus.
04:41By the end of the gruelling 166-minute runtime,
04:45it couldn't be clearer what Dominic thinks of our collective desire
04:48to see Monroe's life story adapted into ephemeral content.
04:53Only God Forgives
04:54Only God Forgives was massively hyped as Nicholas Winding Refn's follow-up to the hugely acclaimed Drive,
05:01as Refn reunited with star Ryan Gosling for what seemed to be another deliriously stylish,
05:07ultra-violent action flick.
05:09But audiences were left dumbfounded that Only God Forgives was basically the anti-Drive,
05:15with Gosling instead playing a not-remotely-badass character
05:18who gets his ass kicked numerous times throughout the film,
05:22and ultimately is defeated.
05:24More surreal and simply peculiar than Drive,
05:26it felt like Refn cackling at audiences who expected him to repeat his prior success,
05:32taking all the clout he earned from that film
05:34to make something deeply weird with one of the most recognisable actors on the planet.
05:39Now that's certainly one way to react to success,
05:42and while Refn clearly could have milked the Gosling partnership for a string of accessible genre films,
05:48he instead scoffed at the notion,
05:50and made something for himself rather than for audiences.
05:53Only God Forgives does admittedly have its defenders,
05:56but for most it was a crushing, bewildering disappointment,
06:00following the brilliance of Drive.
06:03The Dead Don't Die
06:04The Dead Don't Die was sold as a quirky indie zombie film
06:07starring Adam Driver, Bill Murray, and Chloe Sevigny,
06:11with the great Jim Jarmusch directing.
06:13I mean, what's not to like here?
06:15Well, there's the fact that Jarmusch actually hates zombie movies,
06:18and straight up admitted as much in an interview with Rolling Stone,
06:22released the very same day that the movie came out.
06:25Jarmusch said he was, quote,
06:27sick of zombie films,
06:28and described The Dead Don't Die as a, quote,
06:30angry piece of work in that respect.
06:33Which makes sense, given that the movie is an aggressively deadpan stab at the zombie genre,
06:39an almost intentionally boring effort,
06:41which offers its charismatic leads little to sink their teeth into.
06:45You wanted a kooky zombie movie with a bunch of beloved actors in it?
06:49Well, here you go,
06:51seemed to be Jarmusch's sentiment while making this film.
06:54Which baffled critics and general audiences alike upon release.
06:58Wanted.
06:59Comic book writers don't come much edgier than Mark Miller,
07:02and the big screen adaptation of his hit comic series Wanted
07:05certainly stayed true to his provocative ethos.
07:09The slick action thriller revolves around Wesley Allen Gibson,
07:12a timid 20-something loser working a dead-end job
07:16while his girlfriend cheats on him with his best friend.
07:19Over the course of the film, Wesley transforms into a badass action hero,
07:23after learning that his recently murdered father was an assassin.
07:27And by film's end, Wesley triumphantly murders the man attempting to kill him, Mr. Sloan.
07:32But in the movie's final moments, after Wesley shoots Sloan,
07:36he turns to the camera, breaks the fourth wall,
07:38and asks us, quote,
07:44It's as though the movie is basically calling all of us losers for living ordinary, even boring lives,
07:51perversely encouraging each of us to turn the movie off,
07:54to get the hell out of the house,
07:56and seek some gosh darn adventure for ourselves.
07:58The End of Evangelion
08:00The End of Evangelion served as an alternate ending to the beloved anime series Neon Genesis Evangelion,
08:07after the series' ambiguous abstract conclusion left most of the fanbase confused.
08:13And fans being fans, of course, they directed their ire at Hideaki Anno,
08:18in wholly unreasonable ways,
08:20even sending death threats to the filmmaker for how he chose to end the TV show.
08:25As a result of this, Anno was persuaded to make a film to give fans a more satisfying ending.
08:30But he decided instead to double down and make the movie just as heady and perplexing,
08:35albeit at least visually gorgeous.
08:37It's a great film, yet one clearly made with a red-hot contempt
08:40for every fan who raged at Anno for how he chose to end the original series,
08:46adopting a bleaker tone and only offering up answers which invite more audience debate.
08:51And to top it off, Anno even included replicas of some of the threatening mail he received
08:57in the movie's live-action sequence.
08:59Anno basically got to have his cake and eat it too here,
09:02flipping the bird at his overzealous, even-entitled fanbase,
09:06while delivering one of the most acclaimed anime movies of all time,
09:10Joker Foliadour.
09:12Joker Foliadour is one of the most fascinatingly contemptuous sequels ever made.
09:17After Todd Phillips' gritty, original 2019 take on The Clown Prince of Crime grossed over
09:22$1 billion at the box office, and won Joaquin Phoenix a well-earned Best Actor Oscar,
09:28it was only inevitable that Warner Bros. would be hungry for a sequel.
09:31While Joker felt like a standalone one-off project, money talks,
09:35and it's fair to assume that both Phillips and Phoenix were enticed to return
09:39with enormously fat paydays.
09:41All the same, just as he transitioned the Hangover sequels into a more mean-spirited brand of crime
09:47comedy, Phillips decided to get very, very weird with Joker Foliadour,
09:52crafting a film that takes unsubtle aim at the very fans who propelled the original to such success.
09:58Beyond the strangeness of mounting the film as a musical,
10:02the Joker sequel refuses to simply depict Arthur Fleck as the Joker he seemed to become
10:07at the end of the first movie, instead flatly rejecting this notion,
10:11and making great pains to depict him as pathetic and pitiable.
10:15Lady Gaga's Lee is, meanwhile, a stand-in for sections of the fandom
10:19who appreciate only the shallowest aspects of the Joker, rather than Fleck as a human being,
10:25culminating in a nose-thumbing ending that categorically slams the door on any prospect of a third film.
10:32Phillips clearly wanted to do anything but make a movie,
10:35which glorified Fleck's alter-ego any further,
10:37and spent 138 minutes flipping off the great many who expected that.
10:43Aggro Drift
10:44Gummo and Spring Breakers director Harmony Corrine's new film, Aggro Drift,
10:50is basically a visual approximation of a cluster migraine,
10:54an intentional attempt to deliver an aesthetically garish experience,
10:58because Corrine, by his own admission, is bored with movies.
11:02An experimental action-crime film starring rapper Travis Scott,
11:06Aggro Drift was shot entirely with infrared cameras,
11:09lending it a wholly unique, otherworldly aesthetic,
11:13albeit one that also becomes exhausting to watch after a short while.
11:17Corrine further admitted that he didn't actually intend to make a film when he started shooting,
11:21and it shows, because even beyond its gaudy, predator-o-vision visuals,
11:26as a narrative experience, it's dangerously close to incoherent.
11:31This is a movie, quite literally, produced by an edgelord.
11:34I mean, Corrine's production company is indeed called Edgelord.
11:37And so it's fitting that Aggro Drift seems not merely indifferent to the fact that people might try to watch
11:43it,
11:43but even hostile to the very notion.
11:46So, I'll see you next time.