...why so many people are disturbed by this movie. It's just a bunch of foolish people behaving weirdly. That's about it. Now, "Kids" was indeed a disturbing and/or disgusting movie, although Korine just wrote it but didn't direct. Methinks Gummo is quite a good movie because, although there's no plot, the images are quite impressive and they linger in your mind. You get a bunch of random bizarre scenes which, on the whole, make sense.
Because the film has an eerie, foreboding atmosphere. These people are so unhinged that you don't know what anyone will do next, which creates a substantial sense of dread and tension. There are so many glimpses of lives that clearly went down a very tragic path, and the low-fi filming style really conveyed the horror that poverty and neglect has brought upon this forgotten community. Most of the time, it's only hinted at... for example, the mercurial nature of Solomon's mom, who at one minute is feeding her son, washing his hair, dancing joyously and the next she's pointing an (un-loaded) revolver at his head uttering one of THE most reprehensible lines I've heard about child-birth. Or the twin brothers who died, or the glue-sniffing nihilism of Solomon's friends, the references to the occult, the molestation of that young girl by her father, the cat abuse... how is any of that not disturbing? Maybe it says more about the desensitisation of audiences than it does about the frightening power of Gummo itself.
shareWow. You said it there! Agreed.
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