XXX Dark Web (2020)

Director: Lorenzo Zanoni, Domiziano Cristopharo, Alex Hernandez, Emanuele Marchetto, Adam Ford, Daniel Valient

Year: 2020

Country: Italy

Alternate Titles: N/A

Genre: Exploitation; Anthology

Plot:

Desperate for a fix, a man logs onto the dark web and begins browsing the various uploaded videos on a favorite site 

Review:

TeknoBarbie-A woman with an affinity for scratching herself with her nails to the point of drawing blood dances and gesticulates for the camera. This was a brief and uninviting burst of flashing red strobe lightings disguising the point of anything really happening. Since this one tends to subliminally hint at what’s going on with the glimpses of herself drawing blood and what’s going on with her body, there’s a different atmosphere to the rest of the segments that’s quite enjoyable but severely hampered by the brief running time that’s over before you realize this was actually a segment in the film.

The Prosperity of Vice-Awakening in a horrific dungeon, a bound-and-gagged man realizes he’s the plaything for several unscrupulous degenerates willing to go to extreme lengths for their perverse desires. This is an enjoyable if formulaic extreme anthology. While giving this a brutality and demented attitudes that will be present throughout the rest of the segments involving the frequent nudity, body mutilations, perverse sexuality, and tormented agony of the participant involved here leaves a strong impression on what’s to come, especially with the idea presented here for the willingness to engage in such explicit scenes featured here which becomes somewhat more uncomfortable the longer it goes on. It’s a great proper start to the anthology which overcomes its repetitive nature.

Dolls-A masked butcher decides to take apart a young woman and turn her into a living doll. The longest segment in the anthology, there’s a lot to like here. This one comes off well with the brutality of the deconstructing and mutilation present here, offering both physical attacks on her body and the concurrent mutilations on the plastic mannequin he’s using to refill the parts of her anatomy. It all has quite a lot of graphic and over-the-top carnage that is impressively utilized but does drag on a bit with the repetitive nature of everything with very little variation to things. While the visuals are indeed graphic and disturbing which carries a lot of weight overall it still needed a bit more to occur here.

Deconstructing Roberto-Agreeing to participate in a series of experiments, a man finds himself tested to his sexual and psychological limits. Overall this is a decent if a rather bland segment. The perverse nature of the experiment requiring extreme electrical and sexual stimulation to see what produces arousal in the male body is a dark thought, especially as it goes on implicating the idea of numerous such devices and tactics strapped or performed on him in order to generate the desired reaction is a creepy and disturbing idea that takes place here. That it comes complete with a collection of images and concepts to accomplish that is a great touch, if only for the low-key nature and singular setting featured here to make it feel somewhat bland if none of the ideas are that shocking.

Allison's Mouth Fills Up with Blood and S*men-A man gathers his followers together in an apartment complex and begins mutilating each other. Under most circumstances, there’s going to be a lot to like here with the real-life mutilation and bloodletting that goes on here. Since this is genuine and actually shows the group members cutting, stabbing, and slicing themselves to produce real blood fits incredibly well into the format and setup of the anthology. However, it eventually just becomes dull after a while with very little in terms of production values or a purposeful storyline rendering it a one-note piece repeating over and over.

Curiosity Killed the Cat-Desperate for a fix, a man logs onto the dark web and begins browsing the various uploaded videos on a favorite site  As the setup to an over-the-top anthology it serves itself well but really needed a bit more going on. The brief glimpses in his room showing him scrolling around trying to find the next video are okay in theory but that’s all it has going for it. It’s all just so blandly presented here that there’s little about the segments that make sense, with no dialogue and entry point into the segments it’s hard to tell if this is the wrap-around setup or the shorts themselves and becomes part of the confusion over what’s happening.

Overview: ***/5

An enjoyable extreme anthology effort that has some dark and disturbing images but little else going for it, this is a watchable genre feature but is let down somewhat by several underwhelming segments like most normal anthologies are. Anyone who’s into the creative crew or appreciates the approach taken here would be the preferred audience here while most others here will not want to skip this one overall.