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Consequences Movie Review

Consequences is a 2018 Slovenian drama film directed by Darko Stante and starring Matej Zemljic and Timon Sturbej. It is a solid, if far from remarkable feature.

After being sent to a youth detention center, 18-year-old Andrej has to fight for his place within the group of inmates while getting closer to Zeljko, their informal leader, and struggling to keep his repressed secret in the dark. This is the first ever movie from Slovenia to deal with LGBT issues, in particular focusing on repressed sexuality, homophobia, gang mentality and toxic masculinity.

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Reminiscent to ‘Beach Rats’, this is one of the most animalistic films when it comes to coming-of-age stories. It’s not for everybody in its sometimes extreme, unflinching violence, but it’s difficult not to appreciate it for its immense realism. Proving your worth to others and showing off are so realistically portrayed here and as somebody who is from a Balkan country, I found the depiction of these violent delinquents honest and brave.

Andrej is a very unlikable protagonist. You cannot really root for the guy when he is almost as bad as the rest of his terrible group. Zeljko is of course even worse and the extremely toxic, co-dependent relationship that forms between the two lacks any romance or sensitivity and is instead wholly dependent on power dynamics.

Consequences does showcase how toxic these male relationships can become and how toxic masculinity can produce extremely horrible circumstances and broken families, though the movie also portrayed a terrible homophobic mother who is just as atrocious as her son. None of the people in this movie are in any shape or form likable, so that led to a movie that is emotionally cold and difficult to get invested in some of its more repetitive sections.

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The second act is very slow and dull in the consistent chaos that these delinquents produce everywhere they go. The crime elements are realistic, but overly extended and the movie would have fared much better had it been more of a character study. The main acting performance is excellent while the debut directing from Darko Stante is perfectly solid. The ending is brutal, but powerful and very memorable. I just wish the rest of the film had more, well, consequences for these characters and more momentum.