Customer Reviews

Visions of Suffering

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(8)

 

 

First off I have to say Andrey Iskanov is truly an artist. The opening scene (just to give a little away) starts with a priest who loses his faith smack in the middle of an intense nightmare thats depicted very well.
The movie is completely in Russian but thats ok because there really isn't that much dialogue and it relies on the mood and visual effects that are pulled off quite impressively. The way vampires/demons are depicted in this film are not in the conventional sense that has been used and reused over and over again.This is basically a very strange and bizarre horror movie that I would highly recommend for anyone looking for something thats like a breath of fresh air from the same repetitious ideas we are all used to seeing.

Use CAUTION when watching this movie! Dont watch it if you have epilepsy, and in all cases i would suggest using the buddy system for every viewing. Also...i personally feel that it is irresponsible to watch "Visions of Suffering" more than once a week. Your brain may need to recover.

I bought this movie at a horror convention, based only on the cover art and the sellers statement that it was "really weird". Well...he didnt lie. I have NEVER seen ANYTHING like this movie. The best way i can think to describe it is...okay remember the cursed videotape in "The Ring"? That little minute-and-a-half long sequence of just one stressful, frightening image after another? Think something like that....for two hours.

The story is about a guy having an unimaginably bad drug trip and director Andrey Iskanov (who also plays "the priest" in the film) conveys this concept extremely well through the use of wiggling textures, bizarre camera angles, and sounds. If you WERE to watch "Visions of Suffering" in an altered state of mind, theres probably a very serious chance that you could ruin your life forever. EVERYTHING in this movie is frightening, and not often through the use of gore. There is a cocker-spaniel puppy that is absolutely terrifying. And the fish sandwich....oh man. The "shape" of the letterboxing is also changing constantly. Im not even actually sure that the movie is presented in widescreen, but instead some kind of blurry, ever changing black borders that seem to constrict the size of the picture on your tv screen, creating a consistantly claustrophobic sensation.

I love this movie and I show it to everyone. I actually own two copies so I can lend one out to people. It changed the way I think about film making. If you are confident in your ability to maintain a grip on reality in the face of pure, unadulterated terror...then give yourself some dvd-induced Visions of Suffering as soon as possible.

This movie was impossible to follow or understand...there were some cool graffics, but other than that, it blew moose balls. Sorry Landry...Maybe if I ate 5 hits of acid it would have made sense.

First off, let me begin by saying that I do not condone getting online and trashing a movie to it's core. I know that there are as many different interests as there are people in the world. Saying that, I will never say this movie is terrible, don't watch it, blah, blah, blah. I will simply state what I saw while watching this...

I bought this shortly after reading some of the other reviews on this site. All of the talk about this being "just like the 1 1/2 min segment on the ring" and "not viewing this more than once a week" got me completely interested. Even the product description made me think this was going to be an absolute terrifying movie.

What props I will give the movie is that it is completely original. The visiuals, storyline, and score are all different. The camera work is amazing. I see what people found frightening about the fish sandwich and maybe even the dog.

As for the rest of the film, I can't say much about it. I was not in an altered state of mind, which might have helped. I was completely sober with my eyes glued to the tube, and I still cannot say that I understood anything outside of the fact that Russians eat too many shrooms. I didn't see anything outright scary about this movie, which is why I purchased this in the first place. The stroyline jumped without reason, and the small amount of gore was so fake and drawn out that I actually felt uncomfortable after watching one death segment for around 5 min.

While I do appreciate the artistic value of this film I can't say that I would watch it again. I'll piggyback on one of the other reviews; this movie is not for everyone. If you like the artsy type of movies, then you might dig this. If you're looking for a real horror movie, I suggest you look for the Evil Dead series.

Don't be fooled: there is nothing "Lynchesque" about Visions of Suffering, nor is it anywhere near Jacob's Ladder, nor is it surreal or "dangerous" or even the least scary. It's just plain, ugly and pretentious amateur. I'll try to enlist some of the things you may want to know about this film before purchasing:

1. To begin with, there is no plot, no storytelling, no consistency of any kind. Now, permit me to insist: this is not nonlinear, surreal or conceptual narrative. It's just the kind of "horror story" a kid would compose for an assignment, given an "unorthodox" approach that results in complete failure.
2.- The cinematography is hideous (from the very moment you see a 3D grinning skull in the opening credits, you know there's something wrong with this film). Expect 120 minutes of 3D graphics that are not even rendered, with not a single coherent idea of color, camera work, editing or special effects. This film was post-produced 30 minutes before the DVD was released.
3.- The acting is lame, unconvincing, unrehearsed and far from being professional.
4.- The music score must be one of the worst I ever heard. It's but a continuous sampling of industrial/electronic clichés, something a Coil fan boy would come up with.
5.- The film has an overall lack of understanding of what is being done. I wager there is not a single person in the Visions of Suffering team that has had even mild success in the film industry. This is a pretentious movie made by pretentious amateurs for a pretentiously dumb audience. Anyone with a minimum of taste is likely to be offended by this russian baloney, finding it hard to understand how anyone could insult the watcher's intelligence so.

Let me conclude by saying Visions of Suffering is little more than a homemade film, which wouldn't be strictly wrong if it wasn't also incredibly pretentious, boring, claustrophobic, lame, clichéd, ridiculous and absolutely devoid of talent. If it was possible, I would give Visions of Suffering minus far stars, for it is not worth even the plastic it's encased in.

I'm sorry Andrey Iskanov, but this is, by far, one of the worst excuses for a film I've ever watched.

Hope this review can be useful for prospective buyers.

How dare any of you compare this movie with directors like Lynch, Bunuel, Jodorowsky and E. Elias Merhige! Visionaries unwilling to compromise the integrity of their art made with blood and nail to this fool who has no decency in his camerawork, editing, lighting, the bare essentials that can make a scrap of a film great! These images were hardly shocking or "terrifying" you have not been exposed to enough great film if this makes the list for you! These images were lame, repetitive, its so hard to call this movie pretentious because of such little effort, computer graphics, nude women in a club, a woman being beaten, a fat priest (the director no doubt) with holographic lights behind him. Its not as interesting as it sounds its done in such a poor manner. I would be embarrassed to turn this in as a student film! If you want to see it get it on Netflix don't poison your movie collection with this turd.

If you like flashing colored lights, kaleidoscopes, and staring at someone's face for too long again and again and again, and those liquidy crunching sounds that are supposed to gross you out, and silly off-key circus tunes that are supposed to frighten you and that bang away at your ear for five minutes on end, and footsteps that are too loud to be real footsteps, you will love suffering through the mindless and boring repetitious visions of Visions of Suffering. This is what is meant by beating a dead blanking horse to death. I kept looking at my watch and wondering how it could just go on and on and on.

Have you ever gone to bed right after a meal of hot, spicy food? Did you keep waking up and going back to sleep again? That gives you an idea what this movie is like. It feels like one of those surreal "waking dreams". I don't know any other way to describe it. If you've seen David Lynch's Eraserhead or Luis Bunuel's An Andalousian Dog, then you might have an idea what I mean. Don't expect it to make any sense, at least not in an orderly, linear way. You have to be in the right mood for this one.

These are the words I would use to describe this movie. Like another review said there are no words to really explain the movie but you will find many things in this movie illogical and just plain weird. If you think you have seen it all I would definitely give this movie a try, and also I should also point out that the movie isn't perfect but knowing that this movie was made independently and under a really tight budget I would give it an A+.

I purchased Visions of Suffering after reading raving reviews stating that this was a powerful, horrifying film that could be likened to a full-length film version of the tape in "The Ring". Unfortunately, what I found instead was one of the most snore-inducing, pretentious piles of heaping garbage that anyone has dared to call a film. Andrey Iskanov is hardly a visionary or even someone worthy of the title "filmmaker". Visions of Suffering is nothing more than two hours of crowded viewpoints of uninteresting characters who are given absolutely no backstories and are devoid of personality (this could be attributed equally to the poor direction and writing as it could be to simply poor acting ability throughout the "cast").

Never before have I checked the "display" function on my DVD player's remote to see how much time was left in the film so often. I kept holding onto the glimmer of hope given to me by positive reviews that this film would eventually turn around and provide even some juvenile form of entertainment, but it did no such thing. There is nothing even remotely effective about this film. Reviews I read prior to watching the film mentioned how horrifying certain aspects of the film were, but none of these (nor any other aspects of the film) are even relatively disturbing or potent. I simply do not understand how one could derive enjoyment out of this film. I would be truly disturbed if anyone were to see this film as insightful in any shape or form.

The film is so low-budget that, I kid you not, I have seen better quality (in terms of technology) home-made films for school projects done in the years I have attended college. The camera work is atrocious; hardly what anyone could dare to refer to as clever cinematography. The crowded viewpoints that permeate this film are simply uncomfortable, and not in even a minutely effective way either. They are just poorly implemented, just like every other aspect of Visions of Suffering. The sound is so poor and third-rate that I simply won't even discuss it beyond saying that the samples provided lack any bit of sophistication or merit.

I can only imagine that anyone who viewed this and enjoyed it is entirely unaccustomed to even moderately decent film making. This is the work of someone truly deluded and obsessed with their own work, and truly should not be viewed by anyone. Avoid this travesty of a film at all costs, or you will most surely regret the money spent and time wasted watching it.