Neprijatelj

Serbian post-war horror isn't exactly a genre that, if you ask your nearest video store for it, they'll tell you "it's the big rack on the right", even though there is enormous potential in a devastated country where there are fifty landmines per person in the attic, half the buildings would make any structural engineer cry, and not so long ago it was a national tradition to cut off the head of a man who didn't laugh enough at your joke. Plus, The Enemy isn't at all the silly haunted/slasher the setting would dictate (an undermined building where a handful of disparate characters go a little nuts). And I find it hilarious that the fate of the entire world may lie with a handful of depressed poor bastards somewhere in the ass end of Serbia who aren't sure if the creepy Daba is really God, the Devil, or a freak who's just so pissed off about it all that killing him as a possible killing of the Creator could end all the world's problems, because there wouldn't be a world that had those problems. Sure, the script is a terrible construct and the direction isn't so sure of itself. But it's smart, it's innovative, and it creates a mood. (06.03.2013)

I liked The Enemy overall. Gloomy atmosphere, greyish visuals, the setting of postwar Bosnia and Herzegovina (I have a soft spot for it)… and an enigmatic guy walled up in the basement of an abandoned factory. A group of soldiers set him free – they shouldn’t have done it. I loved the first half. The demon that makes people mad at each other nicely reflects the hostility among the Yugoslav nations. The film was aiming at something like “horror with a message”, but in the second half everything that I liked sort of fades away and all I could do was wait until the end. Good, but it had more potential. (03.03.2012)