TIFF25 REVIEW: Karmadona [Karmadonna] [20XX]

Rating: NR | Runtime: 118 minutes
Director(s): Aleksandar Radivojevic
Writer(s): Aleksandar Radivojevic

We all have the same “them.”

You’d be wrong to go into Aleksandar Radivojevic’s directorial debut without trepidation since selling it as “from the co-writer of A Serbian Film” shows a willingness to alienate those who remember what that experience was like. Many will want nothing to do with anything remotely connected to it creatively as a result. And the world of Karmadonna commencing on a playground won’t stop audiences from bracing for impact. It’s why Radivojevic injects humor instead of depravity to ease us into the horror. After all, there’s still two hours to go.

This scene opens with two young boys engaging in a violent altercation before a third breaks them up. Rather than stop and go their separate ways, however, these fighters join forces and turn on this Good Samaritan with more vitriol than they had for each other. It’s a perfectly sardonic look at the plight of human rage and entitlement. That the desire to release our aggression is so strong, we don’t care about the target’s identity. It was never about them anyway. And since most of us wouldn’t actually act on such impulses, we enjoy watching others do so on-screen.

Because it’s funny to see that shift in target and the realization in the third boy that he’s made a terrible mistake. It’s funnier still to watch as their parents recognize what’s happening before running over to end the carnage. So, we wonder what Jelena (Jelena Djokic) might make of the situation as an expectant mother in her forties. Will she start to question her decision to have a child if that’s in her future? Does she have a bit of that violent intent within her too? Well, we’re about to discover the answer as she picks up her phone.

The voice on the other end of the call introduces himself as Gautama (Sergej Trifunovic). And when that doesn’t seem to elicit the desired response, he explains most people know him as Siddhartha. We scoff right alongside Yelena: “The Buddha?” He waxes on about being “the creator of content” and how he’s grown disillusioned by how humanity has squandered his gifts. If it weren’t for “them” (yes, even Gods must answer to superiors—seemingly the abstract concepts of capitalism and control), he’d have already erased our existence.

So, he’s chosen to course correct instead and needs a corporeal accomplice to do it. He sees one in Yelena because he recognizes her love for her unborn baby. By blackmailing her with the threat of killing it with a whisper (something he proves possible by invisibly coaxing one of those boys to run head-first into a tree at full speed), she will become his divine assassin. Because the monstrous culprits he seeks to eradicate are protected by an impenetrable spiritual armor. He can’t therefore infiltrate their minds, but Yelena can still shoot them in the head.

Karmadonna is this unorthodox pair’s push towards that climactic battle between pissed off good and hubristic evil. The voice on the phone must simply put Yelena through some homicide trials to ensure she can be relied upon in the moment first. He’ll inflict unbearable pain upon her body to guarantee she stays in line. He’ll sic her on unsuspecting corrupted souls to test her threshold for violence. And he’ll make her fend for herself when the actions necessary to achieve his goals spiral to the point where she also becomes hunted.

There’s a goofiness to the whole as Radivojević ostensibly puts his warped vision of Neil Gaiman’s American Gods through the filter of Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor’s Crank. It’s about influencers proselytizing miracles orchestrated on the altar of reality television by sinful hedonist clergymen pulling our Messiah’s strings. Buddha gave the world his son Bane (Milos Lolic) as its savior, but he’s been hijacked by Kronjac (Milos Timotijevic) and Danica (Milica Stefanovic) to become a money-making machine. The karma scale has become untenable.

Yelena is stuck in the middle and in need of philosophical and “medicinal” assistance to wrap her head around the insanity. Bane’s TV show got her to quit smoking and drinking before her pregnancy because she knew the person she became while abusing both wasn’t fit for motherhood. But that person is exactly what Buddha needs to tear down Kronjac’s defenses. So, he puts her into situations where those vices become unavoidable. Soon she’s imbibing every bottle she can get her hands on to silence her conscience and rain down fire.

I will admit that I’m only half certain of what’s going on mythologically. Buddha, samara, duḥkha, etc. Radivojevic goes into it all with expository context, but I’m not sure it really matters because it’s a means to an end insofar as stripping Yelena of her morality and getting us to the wild sanitarium battle that awaits with muscle-clad psychopaths and firecracker pyros. It’s the backdrop to deliver comical gags (just wait until you learn who Bane’s brother was) and graphic gore (including a divine organ smoothie).

It’s therefore a totally different beast than A Serbian Film. While still dark and gruesome with taboo topics such as pedophilia and infanticide, it never takes itself seriously. The stuff that Srdjan Spasojevic used to chill us is now wielded as midnight madness fodder to get crowds hooting and hollering rather than calling their therapists for an emergency appointment. It’s fun rather than scarring. While that means Karmadonna is much more palatable and primed for repeat viewings, it does render it less significant. It’s a trade-off most should embrace.