My quick rating – 2.8/10. Every once in a while, you stumble across a film that promises to be so transgressive, so deranged, so artistically liberated… that you brace yourself for impact — only to realize you’ve been handed a Nerf bat. The Benefactress is exactly that kind of experience.
Directed by Guerrilla Metropolitana, reportedly following up their cult(?)-acclaimed Dariuss — a film so underground I’m convinced most of its fans are imaginary — this new outing arrives wrapped in the mythology of danger. A “mysterious dying woman” with a fake name and a televangelist husband bankrolls the project, demanding only one thing: to appear via video link. Sounds like a strong setup for a cursed production. I was prepared for found-footage spiritual rot mixed with deranged control-fantasy chaos. What I got was… a film that really wants to be shocking, but settles for suggestive shrugging.
Let’s start with the stylistic promises. We’re warned up front. We’re told this is linked to Dariuss, that there were shadowy financiers, that unnamed actors had to remain anonymous for safety reasons. That’s adorable. I’ve seen public domain stock footage with more danger. The so-called depravity plays like a late-night cable softcore reel edited by someone terrified of legal liability. Every time a hit is about to land — cut to black. Every supposed moment of penetration — performed from angles so evasive that even chiropractors couldn’t confirm alignment.
And look, fake stuff doesn’t bother me. Theatrical violence is an art form. But don’t tell me you couldn’t show it — when clearly you just didn’t. There are actors in the adult industry who will gladly allow penetration to be filmed, be it a dildo or a penis. The Guinea Pig films from the ’80s still make this look like a church pamphlet. Even the much-hyped “pet” character never reads as anything but a mildly irritated sub working off-script discomfort, not mortal terror.
Then there’s the claim of subliminal messaging. I was told: “The film contains almost undetectable visual subliminals.” Translation: a quick flash of text spelling out exactly what you’re already looking at. That’s not subliminal — that’s a PowerPoint cue card.
Juicy X delivers every line like someone’s standing behind the camera mouthing, “read it or I delete your passport.” The deliberate sound distortion adds nothing but tinnitus. And don’t even get me started on “the cleaner goes down on a dead chick”. It’s not shown. It’s not shocking. It’s an idea someone wrote down at 3AM and refused to delete out of pride.
The biggest flaw? Repetition. With no plot and no escalation, the film loops through staged degeneracy like a broken fetish screensaver. Instead of spiraling into madness, it stalls into mild inconvenience. I wanted to be horrified. Instead, I was checking the timestamp like I was stuck in line at the DMV.
To Guerrilla Metropolitana — thanks for the early access. I respect the ambition. But if you’re going to pitch yourself as extreme cinema, you’ve got to commit. Still, hey — if the filming of The Benefactress got you a deranged threesome out of the deal, at least someone walked away fulfilled. I saw this as a step down from the previous effort in Dariuss. I do look forward to seeing what you have in store for the future when this gratuitous ego stroke is done.
