User Reviews

Just finished watching this movie about 10 minutes ago on Netflix, and I want to write this out while it's fresh in my mind. It wasn't until a few minutes after the credits rolled that I began to consider what it was that I disliked about it.

The movie is well made. The photography, lighting, pacing, editing, and acting are all above average. This is a film maker who could make a stunning film with the right material.

The plot has been described by other reviews. A "businessman" with unspecified ties to the US government is kidnapped while in Europe on business. He is held in an unspecified place, charged with unspecified crimes, and tortured in a progressively brutal fashion. Whoever wrote this screenplay is obviously a devotee of Kafka.

The problem lies in the thematic content of the film, or actually, how the thematic content is expressed. The film embraces more or less three interlocking themes. They are:

First, the idea that everything is theater and entertainment to the masses, not just including the suffering of others, but *especially* the suffering of others. This theme is not original in an of itself. It's echoed in films embracing such diverse settings as the Roman Coliseum in Gladiator, or the tortured rantings of Howard Beal in Network.

Second, the observation that people will go to the worst, most barbaric extremes in service of an ideology or belief system to which they fanatically adhere. In his mind, the extremist believes he is morally justified in what he does. So what if he takes a man's eyes out with a spoon. His Enemy has done a million fold worse than this. This too is not entirely original but it is certainly a theme worth exploring.

Third, we have the theme of sin, penance, and redemption, either in a religious or secular humanistic sense (the two are depicted as parallel). This is where the trouble lies. By the end of this movie, this man has had practically everything taken away from him, his body being taken apart piece by piece. At this point, no one cares what the man has or hasn't done, whether he was truly sincere when he read his scripted apology to his neighbors when he stole from them as a child, whether his business dealings were black, white or grey. None of this matters because the over the top cruelty of his tormentors has rendered him a pure, unmitigated victim. We are horrified and sympathize with him entirely. His kidnappers are are psychopaths with no redeeming qualities.

This kind of simplistic emotional reaction from the viewer is less than a movie of this apparent thematic complexity suggests. This unending torture acts as a thematic bulldozer, causing everything else hinted at which may have been interesting about the movie to recede into the background. At the end, that's what you get, to feel pathos and nothing more.

Creating a good thematic mix in a film is like cooking. All ingredients in their proper portion. Overdo one ingredient and it overpowers the rest and produces an unsatisfying brew.

I recommend this to people who appreciate film-making for its craft, especially that done on a limited budget. For all others, well, you just read the review. Make up your own mind.

The movie Senseless was one of those movies I risked renting on iTunes. The premise seemed to display some promise in the suspense department. I am a bit split on my opinion of this movie as it primarily takes place inside this white wall confine in which Jason Behr's character is being held hostage for a televised torture porno. Apparently online viewers can pay his captors vast amounts of money just so they can watch our protagonist undergo sporadic and systematic torture sequences.

Overall, it was well produced and acted. Senseless operated effectively within its budget and didn't take any economical risks since most of the screening is dedicated to that one white walled room. The main villain had some depth but his henchmen other than the villainess Nim were just bodies behind alien masks. The protagonist is well developed yet still remained mysterious as one of the innocent victims. Senesless is a movie with deeply disturbing psychological roots that uncovers certain moral issues. This was a movie that definitely made me think.

Senseless tried to keep me intrigued and sustained in the protagonist's cubicle but nonetheless made me impatient to watch. The occasional supporting cast that play his captors are temporarily refreshing but it gets old quickly when they systematically continue throughout the film maiming Jason Behr's character. Yes, I found myself wincing at the bazaar torture sequences every time they bound him. But it did get repetitive, and it felt like a run around. I hastily anticipated a pivotal escape scene or something else other than a meaningless flashback, but none of that happened.

My other problem was the sensibility in the writing and yes, the questionable flashbacks that didn't really applied to the story but rather too much on Jason's Behr's character. I was asking myself if people are contributing money to the captor's cause, wouldn't the money be tracked straight to the captors hideout? To where a much desired SWAT team could make an intermittent imposition? That part just doesn't make sense and needed more elaboration to why the protagonist was held for 6 weeks without any hope to be rescued.

What would have worked for Senseless was maybe a better side story that would lead to the inevitable "release" of the main character. Maybe some more funding to create a slew of extras to add some richness to the story. Some plot holes could have been covered.

I am a bit iffy on recommending Senseless. But overall it was okay and wasn't entirely disappointing.

i found the plot synopsis for this movie pretty interesting and for sure the basic ideas could have been easily transformed into an excellent movie, so i found it very promising to check out this flick. usually i try to stay neutral and don't get my hopes too high upfront and would for sure have been satisfied with an at least mediocre thrill ride.

it all starts with our main protagonist captured and been held captivated by a group of people that claim that he is a guest and is about to change. to archive that they want to take away what means the most to him. as soon as he gets tortured for the first time and they take his sense of taste away the viewer instantly knows what that is: his senses. since there aren't too many of those we it becomes clear very early in the movie what will happen within the next 90 minutes. as a movie buff it always worries me when they reveal most of the next events so early in a movie. there are very few directors to either manage to dig themselves outta that hole use that to their advance. Hitchcock would be one of those rare examples that even used this as a stylistic element. unfortunately we don't see such brilliance here.

we further get explained that his sufferings are being broad casted. by that they can only mean an internet stream as TV would be way too off. people can contribute money, write letters and vote his sufferings to stop. the main goal according to the kidnappers is to get together money for their operations.

our protagonist also gets some time with a seemingly innocent female that claims that she doesn't support the ways of the group she's in. this might have been believable in 1960 when this genre wasn't as overused as it uses to be, but nowadays this is simply not plausible.

to justify that exactly this guy has been picked for the operation we see some flashbacks and some explanations by the protagonist himself into the camera, showing that he has been a ruthless idiot without morals in his life. not, necessarily evil, but just not a good guy. i have no idea why that should be a justification for keeping him captivated, torture him for weeks and then cripple him for life, but alright.

all of this counted together makes what we see completely random. the main character is not sympathetic and not evil. the evildoers are simply villains without a reasonable justification. after 45 minutes it just gets mighty boring as it is completely random and pointless. as the graphic violence shown has no real meaning but to shock and disgust the viewer it gets extremely boring. i don't enjoy watching someone getting tortured for 90 minutes. there is no thrill in that, it's just stupid.

nevertheless i was hoping for a clever conclusion AND twist at the end to make up for my lost time. disappointingly this doesn't happen and the movie simply ends.

don't get me wrong, i am a horror movie fan, but this is not a horror movie. there is no thrill in it. i enjoy getting scared and i have seen quite a few Japanese extreme horror movies, but without justification there is no thrill. if this would have been an action movie it would have been transfered to this: i guy drives around in a car and just kicks the heck out of random people and shoots some other, without no reason or background story behind it.

also this genre of movie is not new. if it were there would at least been the justification of going beyond everything else that has been done in other movies just to prove a point. i know for a fact that this has been done much more extreme to prove those points. if you take a look at the guinea pig series then even in the genre of wannabe-snuff-movies this example is just a very lame attempt to even reach those limits.

overall this has been a very disappointing experience.

I won't spoil the ending, but I will talk about the (paper thin) plot, that's why I put the spoiler alert/tag. If you haven't seen the movie, but have plans to do so (although I wouldn't recommend that as you can see by my voting), I'd tell you not to read this beforehand.

This movie is in the vain of similar torture movies (or "gorno" as they are called). While the American business man is supposed to be a everyday man we (or let's say a "western" audience) can relate to, but still stay ambiguous enough, that never fully gets "exploited". Instead it's more exploitation and in a bad way. Robbing a man of his "senses" and making it as painful as possible. But watching this is even more painful, especially because it is as predictable as it can get. While Saw (at least the first one) had an intelligent twist to the whole thing, this movie tries to disguise the whole torture thing with a social commentary, that just doesn't work ...

What I didn't know, but read here on IMDb, is the fact, that this was based on a novel. As a read this might have been more interesting, but after watching the movie, I don't feel the need for more ... "torture"