“The most important questions are the unanswered ones.” Give that a moment to sink in, rid your mind of all preconceived notions of what makes a good horror film and hit play on DARIUSS. This is NOT your typical scary movie. Because there is NOTHING typical about DARIUSS.  

Writer, director, star and eternal artist Guerrilla Metropolitana has compiled a retrospective take on the decline of a nuclear family after the tragic loss of a daughter. Glimpses of her innocence and joy surround the young girl in the heartland of nature while the opening piano score produces beautiful sounds of purity. The sad connotation slowly creeping into view through darkened skies and clouds moving in, suddenly grips you by the throat and strangles you for the next 60 minutes. Heed my warning, this is an interpretative introduction into nightmarish despair without any sense of healing on the horizon.  

While we are given images that hit on all senses, sound is tapped hedonistically through the laughter of a baby, the moans of pleasure and pain, and constant faucet dripping that may cause your brain to swell into implode mode. It’s the general psychosis settling in for a long stay, pushing the boundaries from realism to the unthinkable through generous doses of pedophilia, incest, rape, necrophilia, and cannibalistic murder.  

Metropolitana wants to take you out of your safe space and into an extremely uncomfortable world through graphic imagery, noises that penetrate your skin like crawling bugs, and the unfamiliar territory of shock that resonates with a woman’s powerful grief from the loss of her child. Inconsolable yet provocative moments pound into the viewer as she succumbs to her anxiety, misshaped and broken.  

With a cast of few (all unnamed characters), no dialogue and jumps between masturbatory therapy for the soul and seizure-invoking strobes, make no mistake that DARIUSS shouldn’t be watched by the squeamish. In fact, it probably shouldn’t be watched by just anyone.  

The story behind this lurid tale of depravity is beyond the comprehensive descent into petrified madness, but also symbolic of the ickiness that humans may ponder but rarely share. DARIUSS is taunting, criticizing and unapologetic. The composition has beauty within the graphic nature of its terror; even through it’s indignity within unconventional stylization. This is not for your enjoyment. It’s not a matter of whether you like it or not. DARIUSS is a distinguishing piece of art. You either get it, or you don’t. I got it.