April 11: Upsetting — What movie upsets you? Write about it and share it.

Enter the Void was director and co-writer (with Lucile Hadzihalilovic) Gaspar Noé’s dream project for  years and made possible after the commercial success of his just as upsetting — if not more so — movie Irréversible.

Drug dealer Oscar (Nathaniel Brown) and exotic dancer Linda (Paz de la Huerta) are siblings who have pledged to remain together after the deaths of their parents. After tripping out in a bar called The Void — after discussing the Tibetian Book of the Dead, Oscar is gunned down by cops and has to use his spirit to go through reality to live up to his promise to never leave Linda. As he floats through life, he experiences everthing from seeing how he was set up, how his parents died and oh yeah, what it’s like to both have sex with his sister and to be his sister having sex and then be a sperm that fertilizes her and being born again, living this life as an endless loop.

In his early twenties and totally out of his mind on mushrooms, Noé’ saw the first person movie Lady in the Lake and came to the decision that if he ever made a film about the afterlife, he would make it like that film. While he took ayahuasca to prepare for this movie, most of the cast didn’t have the same drug experiences, so he had to find media that explained the feelings of being high to them.

Why is this film upsetting? Well, as a kid, I never slept because when I closed my eyes, I felt like I would die and I couldn’t imagine it, even if I often planned my funeral in my head all the time. Maybe I was a goth before anyone knew what that was. But this movie would have sent my younger brain into absolute panic mode, starting with those buzzing aand throbbing credits.

You can watch this on Tubi.