Begotten (1991) on Netflix
A masked figure in robes cuts himself open and dies. A woman in white steps from the body, uses its seed to make herself pregnant, and bears a grown, misshapen son.
- Netflix3.1/5
- IMDb5.5/1012,919 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes70%
Trailer
Plot summary
In a crumbling shack, a masked figure in robes cuts open his abdomen with a straight razor and dies. From the corpse a woman in white appears; she arouses the body, takes its seed and makes herself pregnant with it. Time passes and she stands beside a coffin, visibly pregnant, before she gives birth to a grown man who is malformed and cannot walk. She leaves him in the wilderness. Nomads in robes arrive, seize him and haul him off by his umbilical cord. Part of his organs come up out of him, and the nomads accept them as gifts. They lead him across a rocky hillside.
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Begotten (1991)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Begotten was partly financed by a trust fund that E. Elias Merhige's grandfather had set up for him to attend medical school; Merhige paid for the rest with income from the multiple jobs he worked as a special effects artist.
- Unable to find an optical printer he could afford, E. Elias Merhige built one himself over eight months using spare parts gathered from camera stores and the special effects houses where he had worked.
- Merhige developed Begotten into a story after suffering an episode of sleep paralysis in which he felt like he was dying and could not move; once the symptoms passed he began writing to express his views and beliefs.
- Merhige first conceived Begotten as an immersive theater piece with sets built around the audience and performed with a live orchestra, but he abandoned the idea when he learned it would cost a quarter of a million dollars to produce.
- Merhige made Begotten silent after viewing documentary footage of the bombing of Hiroshima, emotionally affected by the complete silence and lack of voice of the victims.
- Most of Begotten was shot at a construction site between New York City and New Jersey, where Merhige was allowed to film for twenty days when construction crews were not working, and the crew sometimes built landscapes for the film's mountains.
- Begotten was briefly released on VHS in 1995 by World Artists Home Video and was banned in Singapore because of its graphic content.
- Marilyn Manson, a huge admirer of Begotten, had art designer P. R. Brown watch it while developing the cover art for Antichrist Superstar, asked Merhige to direct the video for "Cryptorchid", and played the film on a loop throughout the album's recording.
