Lords Of Chaos (2018)

As a fan of Metal and all of it's infamous sub-genres that exist in the world, there was genre of metal that always seemed so dangerous and scary and that was Black Metal. There was a story once that was done on VH1 where they explored the crazy story behind the band Mayhem which featured church burnings, members killing themselves as well as others, and eating their brains all printed in a book as well called Lords Of Chaos. In 2018, writer/director Jonas Åkerlund (Spun) decided to make the book into a film and Lords Of Chaos is born. The film stars Rory Culkin (Scream 4) as the infamous Euronymous, the man who started the Norweigan Black Metal band Mayhem and is often credited as one of the fore fathers of the Black Metal genre. Follow him in this film as he navigates his way to infamy with all of the antics and betrayal that followed. The film also stars Emory Cohen (The Place Beyond The Pines) as Varg, Jack Kilmer (The Stanford Prison Experiment) as Pelle, Sky Ferreira (The Green Inferno) as Ann-Marit, Valter Skarsgård (Funhouse) as Faust, Anthony De La Torre (Vida) as Hellhammer, Jonathan Barnwell (Endeavour) as Necrobutcher, Sam Coleman (Game Of Thrones) as Metalion, Andrew Lavelle (Deep Cuts) as Fenriz, and Jon Øigarden (22 July) as Magne Andreassen.

Well the month of March is considered Metal Month and this is another contribution to the metal Gods in the form of this film. When it boils down to it, the film is about a bunch of guys who created a facade in hopes of making themselves infamous for stardom. Unfortunately, some of them treated it like it was real life that resulted in one doing church burning's while another killed a gay man outside a bar just so he could know what it felt like to kill a man. The end result also ended in the man who created the genre losing his life in a very violent way which is almost poetic even though it is extremely sad, but Euronymous now lives in infamy. Now, if you ask various surviving members of Mayhem and anyone else involved in the scene at the time will tell you that the film is nothing but propaganda and lies. What is true and what is considered fiction in the film is up for debate because they are a very exclusive bunch who will not tell you their secrets. So I think it's safe to say that you are going to have to do a lot of digging around if you want to know what the real truth is. I loved the cinematography in the film because it definitely felt as chaotic at times as the band did back in the day and Åkerlund does an amazing job making them look larger than life and more infamous as well for their antics. While I thought that Culkin and Cohen deserve a lot of credit for their portrayals in the film, you definitely can not leave out the young Jack Kilmer (son of Val Kilmer) who did a great job encompassing the weirdness of the oddity known as Pelle a.k.a. Dead. Listen when I watch a film, I want to be entertained as well as be informed, but if you love movies like this then definitely give this one a watch for what it's worth. I am going to give the film an B for a final grade.