IFC Films Is Facing Sanctions For Screening A Movie That Was So "Ultra-Violent" It Violated All Of The Ratings Rules

HOLLYWOOD REPORTER - IFC Films is facing sanctions for failing to secure an appropriate waiver before hosting Wednesday night’s special showings of an unrated, director’s cut of the gruesome film.

Lars von Trier is nothing if not controversial. In the latest twist, IFC Films is facing sanctions by the MPAA movie ratings board for screening an unrated director’s cut of his new film The House That Jack Built on Wednesday night without getting the appropriate waiver.

The unrated version is playing for one night only in select theaters in more than 100 cities across the country. On Dec. 14, an R-rated version of the movie — about a serial killer who mutilates his victims, including women and children — will debut day-and-date in a smattering of cinemas and on digital platforms.

Hoooooo buddy.  Remember the last movie we talked about, Suspiria, where people were literally passing out and puking in the theater?  Well it appears we’ve got one that’s even worse:  The House That Jack Built, with Matt Dillon and Uma Thurman.  And it’s not for the faint of heart.

“Ostensibly a probing portrait of a serial killer in the Pacific Northwest in the 1970s, the movie also is quite literally a descent into hell. But its true raison d’etre is as a masturbatory dialectic about art and creation in which visual nods to Hitler, Mussolini, Mao, Stalin and Idi Amin give way to images lifted from across the Danish director’s entire body of work,” THR’s David Rooney wrote in his review of the pic.

Seriously, check out the beginning of this Vulture review about “How Violent Is The House That Jack Built?”

Last night at the Cannes Film Festival, as reports started to circulate that a hundred people had walked out of the black-tie premiere of Lars von Trier’s serial-killer film The House That Jack Built, I ran into one of the escapees. He was flustered, indignant, and still trying to get into von Trier’s after-party. How violent was the film, I asked him? The man shook his head: “He mutilates Riley Keough, he mutilates children … and we are all sitting there in formal dress, expected to watch it?”

The article has a ton of spoilers, but if you don’t care, they describe the 4 most talked-about sequences in the movie.  Let’s just say, prepare yourself for the earthquake of thinkpieces from women:

It’s worth noting that von Trier stacks the deck so considerably against Thurman’s character — as well as every female character in the movie, since they’re portrayed as dim, hectoring, or both — that a few members of the press-screening audience clapped when Dillon attacked her.

…You can guess where that one’s going to go, even if Keough takes too long to catch up. As she screams, he soliloquies, telling her that “men are the real victims.”

And PETA (I won’t post that one.  But PETA will be upset.)

The problem for me is that the trailer looks awesome and the story is right up my alley.  However I don’t like seeing mutilated bodies and I especially don’t like seeing mutilated children’s bodies.  Maybe I could pull some strings and use some Barstool connections to get like, an R-rated cut of it, maybe PG-13 but that might be pushing it.  That’s something I could screen for everyone.