Controversial Danish filmmaker Lars von Trier marked his return to the Cannes Film Festival by sparking a mass walk-out with his new new serial killer tale ‘The House That Jack Built’.
The 62-year-old director, who was banned from the competition for seven years after sympathising with Adolf Hitler and the Nazis in a press conference, premiered his new horror at the Grand Theatre Lumiere on Monday night.
According to reports, over 100 people walked out of the extremely graphic movie, which stars Matt Dillon as a sadistic serial killer on a 12 year murder spree. Uma Thurman also also appears as a hitchhiker.
One attendee described the film, which features scenes of child killing and violence against animals, as “Gross. Pretentious. Vomitive. Torturous. Pathetic”. Entertainment reporter Roger Friedman said that the “vile movie […] should not have been made.”
“He mutilates Riley Keough, he mutilates children [...] and we are all there in formal dress expected to watch it?” another viewer told Vulture’s Kyle Buchanan
Cannes director Thierry Fremaux stated that the movie featured “a subject so controversial” that it had to appear in an out-of-competition slot.
The movie has received overwhelmingly negative reviews amongst critics, with the Guardian’s Peter Bradshaw describing it as “an ordeal of gruesomeness and tiresomeness that was every bit as exasperating as I had feared”.
Cannes’ decision to overturn Von Triers ban was controversial, especially in light of the allegations of sexual harassment made by Bjork about their time on the set of 1995’s Dancing in the Dark. Fremaux argued that his punishment, “was disproportionate and that had lasted long enough”.
