Excision is a bizarre film. I picked it up purely on the basis of its attention-grabbing Blu-Ray cover…

…expecting some kind of horror film, probably heavy on the blood and gore. Excision has that, but it’s primarily a black teen comedy, focusing on the struggles of main character Pauline (AnnaLynne McCord) to find her own identity, to lose her virginity and to cope with her overanxious mother and ill sister.

The twist is that Pauline is unlike any protagonist you’ve seen before – deliberately unattractive (the fake eyebrows are perhaps a bit much), wildly misanthropic and obsessed with a possible career in medicine: she concocts surreal, bloody fantasies where she crawls across a sea of naked women or eviscerates her lover mid-coitus. She’s smarter than everyone around her and hyper-aware of this. Pauline’s essentially a blend of Daria from Daria and Tina from Bob’s Burgers (including the sexy zombie daydreams).

It’s apparent from early on that the film is approaching a dark ending: that these fantasies won’t stay fantasies forever, and the climax is both shocking and inevitable. The pace of the film is too slow for a relatively simple narrative, but Excision is different enough to be worth your time.

Rating: 155/200