Kuso

2017 something-rather

Rating: 13/20

Plot: I don't really know. There's been an earthquake in Los Angeles, and everybody has boils.

This is the directorial debut of musician Flying Lotus, a guy who is related to Alice and Ravi Coltrane. He's got no shortage of ideas; unfortunately, a lot of them are just bad ones. The visual sense is often there, especially in this gorgeously perverse collage stuff with this dope electronic music accompanying it. I have no idea what story he's trying to tell or what any of this adds up to if it adds up to anything at all. There are five or six characters' stories being told here, and the characters are all linked by boils and this earthquake that is alluded to a few times. Bugs, pus, deterioration, fecal matter, and bodily fluids are all gross-out motifs. At times, it feels like a collaboration between William S. Burroughs and a gas station restroom. It's Adult Swim-style nonsense turned up to 11 and very likely the squelchiest movie I'll ever see. At the very least, I can now say I've seen a Tim Heidecker sex scene.

It's really a unique little movie, unique enough that I'm willing to give it a rating boost just because it's showing me things I'd never seen before. Of course, it's showing things that most normal people would not have any interest in seeing. I believe I read that there were a lot of walk-outs when this was shown at a festival, and I can imagine why. It had to be the bug-emerging-from-a-doctor's-butthole-to-provide-juice scene. The movie that is reminded me the most of is a Japanese movie called Funky Forest: The First Contact. This was a little more blustery than that one though.

A lot of this, I suspect, is supposed to be funnier than I thought it was. I did almost laugh at an abortion scene though. That's got to be worth something.

I believe I heard a Wilhelm Scream at one point in this. And I know I saw Richard Dawson at one point.

Ok, I've said next-to-nothing about Kuso, and I still have nothing else to say.