Kafro Shavkoom I read many interesting interpretations on the tale of death and rebirth of Gods and I enjoyed the movie under this perspective. But I think there's more to Begotten than that.It is a nightmarish world were behaviors, habits and rituals have their own inner logic and the Gods or Humans in it (or the movie itself for that matter) are not obliged to explain to the viewers what's going on. All this repetition, the monotonous ambient music, the slow progression of events is at the service of arguing that this inner logic exists.The very credits of the film may focus solely on the first 15 minutes (God kills himself, Mother Earth fertilizes herself, Flesh on Bone is born), but in my humble opinion the "story" begins right after that. Because the "story" for me is: this is a bizarre world, it's full of violence and incomprehensible behaviors. (this is the truth for our world anyway. I don't think any external viewer of this world would make sense out of it, nor would they find it less violent if seen in a great scale, space-wise and time-wise)I particularly loved the direction of photography. It plays with space, perspective, contrast and forms very efficiently to create the landscapes and the rituals. In addition, the grainy effect works for the creation of a certain atmosphere. Most important, it is a solid piece of art, it works as a whole. I can't find a dissonance, something in the film, whether it be a scene or a choice in the "art" part, that doesn't match the rest.

chocolateshotgun101 It's difficult to explain what Begotten's about. It's better to be direct and say what this film is. So, Begotten is a collection of stretched out scenes with no dialogue, ambient sounds and indecipherable cinematography. To give credit where credit is due, the beginning scene is pretty good. While it may still be a bit too long, it's creepy and pretty disturbing enough for it to be a pretty good and memorable scene. Unfortunately, it's mostly downhill from here. The rest of the film is indecipherable and boring garbage that felt way too long (ironic since the film's actually quite short).Even if the Begotten was shorter, it still would not be worth your time as most of the actual contents fail to make this film enjoyable.

AllNewSux Okay I admit that I am very mad at this film after watching it for the first time. I came in with such anticipation of seeing the creepiest and weirdest film I've ever seen and it was neither of those. It feels like a bad student film very derivative of early short films by Clive Barker and David Lynch. People have claimed how visceral it is, but I simply found it boring and very cartoonish. The one thing I did enjoy were the sound effects of crickets and fires crackling, etc. The flaw with these sounds are they help put you to sleep for what is already a very boring piece of art. Is combining strange negative filming, no dialogue and minimal sound effects an interesting idea? Perhaps, but all these things have been done before, separately and with much better results. The story, if there is one, is just a convoluted mess. Although the style of filming may be interesting it also makes it difficult to tell what exactly is going on. I'm sure many reviewers who love this film will say I don't understand it or don't like experimental films. Hey, I love experimental films like the ones by the aforementioned Barker and Lynch. I even watched the BRILLIANT experimental film from 1955 called Dementia a few days before I watched this film and absolutely loved it. If you want to give the director some points for originality go ahead, but I assure you, you'll watch it once and never feel the need to see it again.

Roman James Hoffman Remember that scene from the Japanese 'Ring' when we see the cursed video footage for the first time and it's a disturbing, grainy, black and white montage of writhing bodies, ominous hooded figures standing beside the sea, and the well in the middle of the desolate forest? Well 'Begotten' is a lot like that except that it's arguably more disturbing as well as considerably longer.'Begotten' is clearly not for the masses. From the get-go the imagery is gruesome: in the opening scene we see a figure disembowelling himself with a razor, the corpse of which is molested by a female figure who impregnates herself and gives birth to a fully grown man who convulses in seemingly perpetual agony before both of them consequently suffer at the hands of different categories of ambiguous, sadistic ghouls. At the end of the film a cast of 'characters' informs us that those at the beginning were God killing Himself, Mother Earth, and Son Of Earth - Flesh On Bone…if that helps.In addition to this challenging content, another point of contention is the grainy, 'Erasrerhead'-esque black-and-white cinematography which makes the images at times so distorted that it's difficult to discern any clear outlines, which can be frustrating when you're trying to not miss anything in an attempt to fathom the impenetrable narrative! However, in endeavouring to appreciate the bold artistic ambitions of the film I forgave all of this...but the one thing which really irked me was the fact is that it is basically too long. The film clocks in at over 70 minutes and yet I genuinely think I would have appreciated it to the same level if it were half of this.Having said that, the film clearly wasn't designed with any intention of crowd-pleasing, and unrepentantly is what it is: a unique and individual film which walks amongst the best (and most thought-provoking) experimental cinema has to offer. So while you could say "take it or leave it" I really think those that choose the latter are missing something exceptional.