Begotten

Begotten (1991) is a silent, wordless avant-garde horror-fantasy you can watch online on iFILM, directed by E. Elias Merhige. Shot on 8mm film and then extensively re-processed to strip the image to near-abstract black and white grain, the 72-minute film presents a creation myth: God disembowels himself, Mother Earth conceives from what remains, and a figure — Son of Earth, Flesh on Bone — is born into a barren landscape and taken up by roving nomads.

There is no dialogue, no conventional story structure. Brian Salzberg, Donna Dempsey and Stephen Charles Barry move through the film like figures in a ritual rather than characters in a plot. Merhige was 24 when he made it, and the obsessive visual commitment shows in every overexposed, deliberately degraded frame.

The film became a cult touchstone for experimental and extreme horror, cited by Marilyn Manson as a direct influence on his visual work. Not easy viewing. Entirely singular. Stream Begotten (1991) online on iFILM.