ANGST a.k.a. PENETRATION ANGST

Advance warning--the first ten minutes of ANGST are going to feature one of the most bizarre scenes I've seen from a movie that wasn't Japanese  Because unless I've completely misunderstood what happened--and it's very possible, believe me--I just watched some guy rape our main character, Helen, and then vanish into her vagina.  And all that was left of him was his clothing.  And no...before too much longer there will be confirmation of exactly that.  The guy got sucked up into her vagina.  And he is only the first. Because Helen's cooch will be constantly screaming for meat, which means a whole bunch of guys will be vanishing like some kind of weird Copperfield act.  Helen will therefore--in a move that should surprise absolutely no one--become a prostitute.

But even better, apparently, the vagina gets hungry between meals of men, and thus Helen needs to offer it between-men snacks.  Like hot dogs.  Seriously--she's going to be jamming weiners up there like no tomorrow, just to keep that thing fed.  And I can't believe I just wrote that.  Perhaps the worst part of all this is that this is in fact the plot.  Men vanish, cooch demands meat, more men vanish, insert lame subplot involving conjoined twins, repeat ad nauseum.

 

For a movie called ANGST, I'm sure laughing my butt off at it.  At least, for a while, anyway--then it just starts getting pointless.  For some reason, there's a side story involving Helen's stalker / lost love and a pair of conjoined twins.  And the novelty of Helen's carnivorous nether regions only lasts so long.  Then it's just dull.

 

And I find this to be the most unnerving sign of all.  When you're doing a movie that takes vagina dentata action to a wild and heretofore unrivalled new extreme, how exactly can it become boring?  How, HOW, can you not wring excitement about a really, really hungry vagina?  The fact that you've got every man's worst nightmare packaged in one clean hundred and six minute block and you can't even make it remotely scary is a fact that boggles the mind as well as insults the intelligence. I mean, maybe it would have helped if we hadn't gone launching off on all these unnecessary subplots.  Maybe we should've just done ninety minutes of Helen's crotch lunching up on random men.  For a stroke of irony, it could have eaten a performance of "The Vagina Monologues" and then belched.  That would have at least been funny.

 

But ANGST plays it neither funny nor scary, which is a shame, because this

kind of plot should be at least one of the two, and a really good version should be occasionally both.  The ending, however, does do a nice job of coming full-circle, and it even packs in a surprise or two.

 

The special features include Spanish subtitles, a making-of featurette, a cast and crew section, and trailers for LIVE FEED, TWISTED SISTERS, and

LOVESICK: SICK LOVE.  All in all, ANGST was a movie that started out as great comedy, but steadily got darker and less pleasant until the end, when it wildly improved.  If you're willing to put up with about an hour of crap for a great payoff, then ANGST is the movie for you.

RATING: ** (out of four)