Watching this movie really made me sad. I did not feel sad on behalf of the characters however - but on the behalf of the movie itself, its corrupt values, and its sadistic goals. The recipe of this film is this: take an all-American Christian family, tear it apart, watch it suffer and die, and leave it in its grave to decompose. End of story. Nothing else. The film does not care in any way about the people it portrays - we do not at any moment feel sympathy with anyone in it and do therefore not share their suffering, but instead simply watch it from a distance - which is what sadism is all about. I don't know if anybody gets off on this - I do not, I just feel sad that a movie as this can pass on as art and that not even my favorite critic, Roger Ebert, can see through its rotten morals. "The King" tells us that the world is a dark and evil place, that people are dark and evil, and from the moment we meet the Christian Pasteur and his family we know what is going to happen: the movie is going to take a deep and dark revenge upon them for their false ideas. I have long gotten used to christians being portrayed like they are in this film - as judgemental fanatics, holier-than-thou republicans, world distant freaks and born-again losers. I can easily forgive such a (false) view if a film has heart, but this film hasn't. If you want to see a satanistic film (satanism in fact tells us that love is false and hate is real), go ahead and watch it, but if you enjoy it, well, you really should start worrying about yourself.
